The Slow Work of God

Trust

“Trust in the slow work of God,” has been my mantra for the past several months. Sometimes I recite it in a centered, trusting, and peaceful way. Other times I say it with an irritable, impatient, and resentful tone. It depends on the day - and now that I think about it - how much news I’ve watched that day. Regardless of how peacefully or irritably I recite my mantra, there is something in those words from Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s poem, “Patient Trust,” that gives me hope.

Patience

This pandemic seems like a long time (and it is!) but it is helpful to remember that this is not a long time according to God’s measure. Yes, we are grieving for the freedom we used to have and the tragic loss of life due to COVID-19. There is frustration over a divided country, anger over racial injustice, and a feeling of instability over violent looting. It can be easy to feel a sense of hopelessness or powerlessness. But when I trust in the slow work of God, I am reminded that the grace of God is alive and active. Beneath the uncertainty and grief, I have a calm sense that all I need is that 'patient endurance' from the last line of the Parable of the Sower Explained in Luke 8:15: 

But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.

For me, patient endurance means letting go of my ego (as much as I can), letting go of my need for control, my insecurities, and my fears. I am not pretending to say that any of this is easy. I am about to fly my daughter back to college in a couple of weeks and I bet she would love to insert a couple paragraphs here on my need to let go! I am here stumbling, getting lost, and then dusting off my feet and continuing to walk again. I am commited to the walk. Having just passed the second year of the loss of my son, I accept that fear and anxiety will probably always be visiting me throughout my journey. When they visit, I will walk with them and eventually see how God is leading me to calmer waters. I believe there is always the light of Christ to be found in the darkness. That’s how I patiently endure.

Work

Patiently enduring is not an invitation to live in denial or passively surrender to injustice and violence. We are still called to do the hard work of naming our pain and loss, acknowledging our grief, and humbly partaking in an honest conversation about race. When people say, “time heals all wounds,” I always speak up and disagree. Work heals all wounds. When you are commited to patiently endure, you are commited to doing the hard inner work of personal and spiritual growth.

To be sure, there is a reward for all that work. When you commit to patiently endure, you have a much more centered heart of trust. You believe in God's timing and you can surrender to walking the long journey of life. You can find peace as you actively engage in life and contribute the gifts you are called to use that will help bring the peace of Christ into this world.

Patient endurance comes when you give yourself the sacred time and space to pray and reflect in order to listen for the voice of God above the loud, panicky voices of the world. And it comes when you look back at the times in the past when God's grace was there helping you and leading you even when you could not see it. 

Grow

I invite you to reflect on the parable of the sower explained from Luke 8:15. What is being sown in you during this time? What are you hearing inside of you above the tension and loud cries? If there are some subtle stirrings, think of those quiet whisperings as seeds planted in your heart. Those seeds now need to be nurtured with a rich soil in order to grow into the new choices or attitudes or behaviors that they are meant to grow into. How can you use this time to deepen your growth? How can your reflection time help you to patiently endure?

Hope

Keep listening and trusting and you will find your hope during this time. As Romans 8:24-25 says, Hope that is seen is not hope at all. Who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

This is the time to be slow

by John O’Donohue

This is the time to be slow,

Lie low to the wall

Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let

The wire brush of doubt

Scrape from your heart

All sense of yourself

And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,

Time wil come good;

and you will find your feet

Again on fresh pastures of promise,

Where the air will be kind

And blushed with beginning.

Patient Trust

by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

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.

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How are you ‘patiently enduring’ during this stressful time?

In the Hands of God

We invite you to learn about, “In the Hands of God,” a communication tool to help you trust God and invite God into your problem-solving. Learn more in our, “Prayers & Practices” video series.