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 do 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. 

-Teilhard de Chardin, SJ