Patient Trust

 By Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God 

We are quite naturally impatient in everything
      to reach the end withour 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 progress
      that it is made by passing through
      some states 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.

 
Copyright: The Institute of Jesuit Sources