Faith & Spirit Quote by J. G. Holland

"Work and wait" lands like a moral drumbeat: not advice so much as a theology of time. Holland gives the line a liturgical repetition that mimics routine itself, the way days stack into years. By putting the phrase in God's mouth "in creation", he fuses labor and patience into something naturalized, even sacred. The subtext is blunt: if the universe is built on long, incremental processes, then your frustration with delay is less a personal crisis than a misunderstanding of how reality runs.

As a 19th-century American novelist steeped in Protestant earnestness, Holland is writing into a culture intoxicated with industry but anxious about meaning. The rising tempo of manufacturing and expansion promised quick results; the older religious imagination insisted that character is forged slowly, under constraint. This line reconciles those pressures by reframing waiting as part of the work, not dead air between achievements. It's also a quiet argument against the Romantic fantasy of sudden breakthrough. Creation, in Holland's telling, isn't a lightning bolt; it's a schedule.

There's a double edge here. The comfort is obvious: stalled progress isn't failure if even God operates on a "work and wait" rhythm. The danger is just as real: sanctifying delay can slide into sanctifying injustice, telling people to endure conditions that should be changed. Holland's intent is consolation with a Protestant spine, but the cultural residue reads like a prototype of hustle culture with a halo: keep going, stay obedient to the timeline, and trust that time itself is God's collaborator.