In due time

Several years ago I ran across a quite popular prayer and reflection by the Jesuit thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  The prayer serves as a lesson in patience and the promise of growth.   It reminds me, today, of how important it is to look beyond the immediate opportunity and onward to the things that may still be, but are very much hidden.  Often we desire so badly one thing of the present, only to be hardened upon its rejection.  However, years later, life goes on stronger and positively, full of a fresh and reawakened self.  I share it with this blog, as it remains a powerful reflection for me today.  Possibly, it may be welcomed for you, too.

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 would 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 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.


Patient Love- Attached (to the left) you will find a podcast reading of the prayer.  Enjoy!