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

(1881-1955)

paleontologist, philosopher, Jesuit priest