When I’m impatient for growth I’m likely to miss what is going on now.
This past week I was listening to a podcast on the Order of the Mustard Seed and was delighted to hear
Nina Schuurman Drenth from Canada talk about following Jesus and becoming comfortable with the space in-between from here to “there.” This is such a great line: “accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.”
She quoted Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s poem Patient Trust and I was encouraged to keep trusting the Lord for transformation in my own life. I was also drawn to turn it into a prayer for so many of the people who are part of Origin Church. While it feels slow, as we surrender to Christ, we are daily being transformed to be like Jesus!
Here’s the poem.
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 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.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
excerpted from Hearts on Fire