Patient Trust

Poetry and song have a way of touching places in our souls that didactic teaching simply cannot access. Below is a poem that has ministered to me as I walked through seasons of waiting. I’d encourage you to read it slowly and thoughtfully. Ask Jesus if there is anything he wants to say to you through the prose.

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 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.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

Shared by
Pastor Ryan Paulson