In God's Time

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 circumstance
acting on your own good will)
will make 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 Tellhard de Chardin