29 January 2011

Trust in the slow work of God























Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
       to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
      to something unknown,
      something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
      by passing through some stages of instability
      and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
      as though you could be today what time
      -- that is to say, grace --
      and circumstances
      acting on your own good will
      will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new Spirit
      gradually forming in you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
      that his hand is leading you,
      and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
      in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
      our loving vine-dresser.

Amen.


-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin