My friend Keith needed help with his sermon (I highly doubt this premise) for Sunday and opened the doors to hacks like me to offer their ideas about people in the Bible who were "in process." I tried adding my comment to his blog, but was soundly denied by Live.com's feeble attempt at a blog engine, so I posted my response here.

This is probably the verse you're preaching on, but Phillipians 1:4-6 "In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

As I think through the Bible, I see Israel itself being in process. From the time Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden the process began. You have repeated periods of ups and downs. The Israelites being sent away from Canaan the first time for their lack of faith, then entering the second. Their desire for a king during Samuel's time and the anointing of Saul, followed by his fall, then David, then a succession of kings good and bad.

I thought I read something similar in the prophets, but Romans 8:22 has this: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." I love that image of God "impregnating" all of creation with the savior Jesus and that the trials and struggles Israel experienced along the way are all labor pains that lead to the birth of the savior out of humanity. If you take the original sin of Adam and Eve as the beginning, the trials and struggles are the pregnancy and all it entails. You finally come to the birth when the baby has to come; maybe you're not ready; maybe the nursery isn't painted; maybe you've been waiting like Simeon and Anna, ready and knowing it will be soon. You are left with the baby, taking him home to care and raise him and present him to the world.