Yesterday I quoted the last line of this prayer. Below is the prayer in it’s entirety from Telliard De Chardin. After reading, I’m interested in hearing your answer to this question: What is your initial reaction to the phrase “the slow work of God” and why?
“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 goodwill 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.”
-Telliard De Chardin