This is from a Focus on the Family Magazine (sorry, I don't know which one)

"Consider the period between teenage Joseph receiving a God-given dream and actually ruling around the age of 30- not easy years. He had to outgrow the impatience and arrogance of youth. In prison, he was forced to mature through the heartache of being abandoned by family and forgotten by friends.

And how about David? The gap between shepherd and king was filled with fear, desperation and constant running from Saul- a process that ultimately matured David from young man to adult as he leaned on his God for deliverance.

Could Joseph or David have ruled with wisdom without those intense years of transition? What they learned about the Lord during those times prepared them for the very roles God had ordained for them.

What if we viewed periods of transition as the pause between good and better, as our friend and not our enemy, as pivotal moments when our life's course can move from stagnant to fluid?

Jesus said it best: "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:24)."