Friday, January 11, 2013

Trusting in the slow work of God

Last night brought a rare moment of being able to just sit in the living room and be quiet for awhile. It was a prayerful time: who I am, my family, church and all the horizon will unknowingly reveal. While staring at our fake fireplace a line from a prayer I heard a few months ago arrived, "Trust in the slow work of God." It comes from this prayer by Father Teilhard de Chardin:

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


The last line is my difficulty. Not in agreement but in practice. Accepting the anxiety of suspense. 

I am the paradox of loving to be surprised but then doing all I can to discover them. It takes a lot for me when reading a book not to glance at the last line of the last chapter just to see where it is going. It's possible on a Kindle but not in breathing. We can't see our last line anymore then the chapter that ends in a few months. 

So this is my prayer for now...Lord help me to embrace the suspense. 

Trusting him as the author of this story allows me to bravely move into the unknown. Trying to figure the plot by my own wits just makes for a lame hack job of a script. 

And I want my story to be a good read.

2 comments:

Jessica said...

Love it. :)

Shirene said...

Boy do I know that feeling too! Why can't God just beam me down an email to let me know where this is going, less stressful that way :)