Trust in the slow work of God

Circumstances of a chance ‘chink of ‘insight’ from a moment’s encounter planted this seed of prayer: ‘trust in the slow work of God’.  It seems both apt for this particular day, the ‘World Day for Consecrated Life’ (when we pray in particular for all discerning and wanting to respond to the plan of God for their lives) and also an inspiration reminding each of us to try to live counter to the mad rushing torrent of instantaneous everything that the pace of life today seems to ask of us.  We can choose to live to slow it down, and to connect with that ‘new spirit gradually forming within us’.

Patient Trust

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.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it 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.
Don’t 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 of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within 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.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
excerpted from Hearts on Fire

See also:  Brigid, breath of faith

And Called to consecrated life