The Conundrum of Progress

Many of the stately live oaks of Southern cities like Savannah, Ga.
and Charleston, S.C. took centuries to grow.

My junior year in high school, I took a personal typing class. Planning to attend college, it seemed worthwhile to learn how to type reasonably well for writing essays, term papers and other assignments. I had no idea how it would help prepare me for a career in journalism.

I remember starting with the “home row” – ASDFG (left hand) and HJKL (right hand) – and which fingers to use on which keys, and then trying to learn to type without staring at the keys. At first the task seemed impossible. “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,” I was convinced, would forever exceed my typing capabilities.

Over weeks and months, however, my typing skills slowly improved, I started feeling quite at home with the home row, and to my surprise, could succeed in typing without checking which keys my fingers were striking. My speed increased, too, from 10-15 words per minute to upwards of 60 (with gusts into the 70s), along with my accuracy. Practice wasn’t perfect, but I was getting closer. Only later did I realize I was learning to flex “muscle memory.”

In my first news writing class as a journalism major in college, we were instructed – and learned – to think and write with fingers fixed on the keyboard, composing fast-breaking news stories without pen or pencil to slow the process. Again, who knew that was even possible? But we all learned to do it.

Years later, secretaries and administrative assistants where I worked would occasionally observe that I typed faster than they did. I share this not to boast of my typing acumen, but to affirm how progress has a way of sneaking up on us, whether learning to type, play a musical instrument, make sales presentations, or mature in our faith.

Day to day advances may seem imperceptible, but looking back over time, we become surprised by the progress we’ve made. It’s a bit of a conundrum, progressing millimeters at a time when we want to advance in quantum leaps.

Twisting, curving live oak branches
embody the slow pace of progress.

Recently my wife and I toured Savannah, Ga. and gazed with wonder at the huge, stately live oaks whose curving branches extend in every direction, across streets, parks and pathways. Such growth, however, has been exceedingly slow in coming. Many of those elegant trees are hundreds of years old; centuries later we can appreciate how stately they grew, but I’m sure citizens who saw them in the 1700s and 1800s weren’t so impressed.

I remember the first time someone commented about my spiritual growth. This was a friend I saw once or twice a year, so he could perceive progress I could not, immersed as I was in the mundane routines of life. How encouraging that was, since I felt like I was merely spinning wheels spiritually.

This apparently is as God intends for it to be. He often uses slow, sometimes exasperating progress that the Living Bible paraphrase of Proverbs 21:5 describes as “steady plodding,” as opposed to “hasty speculation,” whether applied to material or spiritual riches.

Ephesians 6:4 instructs fathers, “do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” As I read this, it seems God is telling us not to expect too much too quickly from our children, whether the offspring happen to be biological or spiritual. As the apostle wrote in 3 John 4, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”

Colossians 2:7 speaks of being “firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.” This doesn’t happen overnight, or even over weeks or months. Spiritual growth is never-ending, and the quest for spiritual maturity requires a lifetime.

We see this over and over in the Scriptures, whether it’s Eli the priest mentoring future prophet Samuel, Samuel coming alongside future king David, Jesus working 24/7 with His disciples, Barnabas taking Saul (who became Paul) under his wing, or Paul instructing Timothy. In each case, their goal was progress, understanding progress can be a tedious, sometimes one-step-forward, two-steps-back process.

Living in an immediate gratification-oriented, gotta-have-it-now society, the painstaking pace of progress can be perplexing. But it’s necessary. Because spiritual giants aren’t grown in a day.

Flexing Your ‘Memory Muscle’

How do my fingers know which keys to strike when I'm writing?

Taking Personal Typing during my junior year of high school, I had no clue it would be instrumental for my career as a journalist. All I knew was I needed to learn the “home row” and train my fingertips to type “ASDF-space” and all the other letters, without staring at the keys.

At the time I considered it preparation for writing papers in college. But my first class in news reporting showed me the genius behind learning to become proficient at the typewriter. (This was, of course, years before anyone had personal computers. Even electric typewriters!) I could pound out articles on deadline without time-consuming hunting and pecking for letters.

Over the years my keyboard proficiency increased dramatically. Secretaries and administrative assistants – whose jobs often revolved around typing skills – would marvel whenever they passed my office and heard my keys rapidly clicking away.

Today, decades after my high school typing class, the skills I began acquiring then continue to serve me well. What’s strange is if you asked me to locate a specific letter on the keyboard, I’d be hard-pressed to do so without looking. As the old Yellow Pages ads used to say, “my fingers do the walking.”

This trait is shared by many others – such as pianists and other musicians, craftsmen, surgeons, even video game aficionados. After years of practice and repetition, their hands and fingers move as quickly as their brains.

It’s called “muscle memory.” One definition describes it as “consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition. When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed without conscious effort.”

In simpler terms, it means doing the same things the same way, over and over, until they become subconscious habits.

Perhaps other uses for muscle memory come to mind, but I think it’s particularly valuable for times when we need to flex our spiritual “muscles.”

For instance, when we face an unexpected crisis, how do we respond: Anger? Panic? Confusion? Or do our first thoughts turn to God, asking Him for direction and assistance as needed?

Or at work, when confronted with a situation that would compromise our values, or we need to make a crucial decision, do we defer to expedience – or do we consult the Lord and pray for His wisdom in doing what is right and best?

Maybe we encounter temptations that plague us. Do we yield to them, playing the “I’m only human” card, or do we run to God for strength to overcome or flee from potential sin?

How do we build “spiritual memory muscles”? There's no quick, simple way. It takes diligence and determination, repetition and practice, day after day. I hate legalism, the religious guilt-trip that tells us we must pray, as well as read, study and meditate on what God says in the Scriptures. But there’s no other way to build a relationship with Him, get to know who He is and who He wants us to be, or learn how He desires for us to live.

Just as one hour of practice once a week will never suffice to develop a virtuoso pianist, an hour a week in a worship service will never result in a faithful, fervent, consistent follower of Jesus Christ.

But time devoted every day in prayer, meditation and reading the Word of God will equip us for moments of crisis, days of decision, and times of temptation. As King David wrote in Psalm 119:9-11, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart, do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

And the apostle Paul urged his followers in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

If you do that consistently, you can always feel confident of doing the right thing – the godly thing – just as through repetition and practice, I trust my fingers to strike the right keys to complete this blog post.