today's prayer

Above All, Trust in the Slow Work of God

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.

Yet it is the law of all progress that is made by passing through some stages of instability and that 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. Do not 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 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.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.

Amen.

Author: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I read this prayer during devotions this morning and seriously got chills. I have been so badly wanting to rush everything in my life. I want to graduate, I want to find that perfect job, I want to have a dog, I want to find the right guy and even make the wrong boy the right one, I want to hurry everything because I see everyone else making life changing decisions, and I am not. But I do NOT think it was a coincidence that I read this prayer today, so I’m working on trusting in the slow work of God. I’m praying that I can be better at trusting and being patient to His plans for my life, because the outcome is always so beautiful and worthwhile.