My apartment currently smells like bananas.  This is because I have a banana languishing on my counter encased in an increasingly brown skin.  It has passed the point where I actually want to eat it, but it is not quite so far gone as to be demoted to the compost bin.  What it really needs is for someone to turn it into banana bread.  And by someone, of course, I mean me.

And therein lays the problem.

Because turning a banana into banana bread is not like Jesus turning water into wine (John 2).  Making banana bread actually takes… work.  Not that I’m particular averse to work.  It’s just that sometimes, like right now, I’d rather be lazy.  But while pondering this rather forlorn looking banana, I came to think about one translation of Paul’s note to the Romans:  “All things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28). 

Paul didn’t say, “All good things will be handed on a silver platter to those who love God.”  He said: “All things will work.”

So here’s a pleasant thought for a Monday morning: life takes work.  Whatever kind of week you’re staring into, buckle down and get to it.  Because sometimes good things come… not to those who wait, but to those who work. 

After all, those who work get banana bread.  Those who wait just get rotten bananas.

We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).