by Michelle Lonenberger
Guest Columnist
RevMarkCreech.org
“Papa, how much longer?”
“Punkin’, you know it’s gonna take some time. You’ve got to be patient.”
“But my arm is so tired! I can’t crank this thing anymore… You’re gonna have to do it! I can’t anymore!”
“I’ve been waiting on you to let me take a turn, silly girl. All you had to do was ask.”
My papa scooted the old wooden ice cream maker a couple of feet across the old cement porch, pulling it to where he sat, and started turning the metal crank.
I carefully slipped my finger along the rim of the wooden bucket, pulled out a sliver of ice, and dropped it down the back of my shirt. That was the closest it came to air conditioning for that 1790s log house in the heat of summer.
That house had seen about 200 summers—but I had only seen seven. In the scope of my little life, churning that ice cream seemed like a long and painful experience.
My foothills-raised papa only had a third-grade education, but what he lacked in “book learnin’,” he sure had an overabundance of in good old horse sense and the things of the Lord. He had a way of making everything a lesson for me. Everything had a life principle or a spiritual truth tucked inside it.
As we sat there on that old porch, shooing away the occasional fly (and me poised to bolt like a wild pony should a Junebug from the nearby hayfield make an errant flight toward me), my grandfather started humming, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
“Shelly, you know sometimes life will get hard, and we’ll get tired, and we’ll wanna just quit. Like you wanted to quit turnin’ this here ice cream. Now, if we quit turnin’ this thing, how we gonna get the ice cream, hmm? This here churn gets harder to turn the closer we get to the end… Here, honey, you give it a try.”
My seven-year-old arms could barely move it.
“Come on, girl! Put some muscle into it!”
I tried, but it barely budged.
“Papa, I can’t! It’s too much for me!”
“Girl, you want some help?”
“YES!”
“All you have to do is ask.”
My grandfather put his big, worn farmer’s hand over my little ones. Together, we turned the handle.
“Honey, you gon’ learn as you get older life’s gon’ get harder than this here churn. All you gotta do is ask the Lord to help you, and He’ll put His big hands over yours and help you get it done. The closer we get to the end, the harder it’s gon’ get… but when we get to Him in the end, He’s gonna make it all sweet.”
The handle got to where it would barely turn, even for my big, strong grandfather.
“…Now, lookie here, let’s see what all this hard work we done together got us good for.”
My grandpa pulled off the top of the churn, lifted the lid from the canister, and there on the paddle was icy, sweet peach ice cream.
“Now you see what you’d’ve missed if you’d just quit and didn’t ask for help?”
As he took a wooden spoon and plopped some of that icy peach goodness into my little paper bowl, he said, “Girl, you just remember—when things seem hard and you wanna quit, all you gotta do is ask the Lord to help you. He’s just a’waitin’ for you to ask. And in His time, He’ll turn all the hard work into somethin’ real sweet. It’ll be worth not quittin’.”
His wise words have come back to me many times over the years, but perhaps never more than they have lately.
They remind me of Ecclesiastes 3:11:
“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.”
Every. Thing.
That burden that’s stealing your sleep.
That disappointment that knocked the wind out of you.
That prayer you’ve prayed for so long you’ve almost grown weary of asking.
That situation you can’t fix.
That season where your arms are tired from turning the churn.
Whatever your “thing” is, don’t quit. Don’t quit what God has called you to do, whatever that may be.
Sometimes we simply need help turning the churn. All we have to do is ask Him.
It seems discouragement has become the language of our day. I see it often among those serving in ministry because that’s where God has called me to serve—but the truth is, it’s everywhere.
There are seasons where life just doesn’t feel beautiful—times full of uncertainty, change, and everything piling up at once. It’s easy to look at all the scattered pieces and wonder how any of it could possibly make sense.
But even then, God leaves us little reminders that He’s still working. He opens unexpected doors. He quietly provides exactly what we need. He gently reminds us that while we can only see one piece of the puzzle, He already sees the finished picture.
Ecclesiastes doesn’t say everything is beautiful.
It says He makes everything beautiful in His time.
Which means the story isn’t over yet.
We may not understand what God is doing. We may not know what’s coming next or how all the pieces will fit together. But we can trust that the same God who has been faithful every step of the way is still directing our path.
One day it’ll all make sense. What felt like delays will prove to have been divine appointments. The waiting had a purpose. The disappointments redirected our steps. Even the hardest seasons were shaping something far more beautiful than we could see at the time.
God has never been late.
So today, choose to trust His timing instead of your own. Believe that every unanswered question, every closed door, every tear, and every unexpected blessing is being woven together by hands that never make mistakes.
He’s making everything beautiful—not on our timeline, but on His.
And when He finally lifts the lid, I believe we’ll discover that what He was preparing all along is sweeter and more beautiful than that icy peach ice cream was to a seven-year-old little girl sitting on the cement porch of her grandparents’ humble 1790s log house—with tired arms from turning the churn, but a heart full of joy, a mouth full of sweet blessings, and a Papa who knew that God always saves the sweetness for those who don’t quit.
