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 would 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 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.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in a letter to a young student