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I find myself regularly returning to a particular prayer in this season. It comes from the pen of the 20th-century French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Allow me to quote it in full:
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.
—Excerpted from Michael Harter’s Hearts on Fire: Praying with the Jesuits (2005)
This is such a paradox. Jesus’s sacrificial death on the cross and His victory made manifest by the empty tomb were definitive and decisive. Truly, there and then Christ broke the power of evil, sin, and death and now is making all things new, even us. Yet this journey into newness is long. The process of sanctification is a slow and gradual, peppered with moments of breakthrough. It is almost as if Jesus is breathing His resurrection life into our mortal flesh one organ system at a time, chiseling us stroke after deliberate stroke into the image of the Son.
That means we will spend the vast majority of this life of faith as a humble work in progress. Most of our days will involve trekking uphill or slogging through the mud, not standing at the base of the waterfall and marveling at the vista. How are you doing with “the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete”?
I am so encouraged that when the Lord invites us into adventure, he promises, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:14). He is not speaking merely of temporary respites for refreshment along the way, but a deep and enduring centeredness and well-being that is ours through Jesus’s abiding presence. Even in the midst of exertion and uncertainty, we can rest in our belovedness. We can experience confidence because it will never be Christ who withdraws from us. He is ever faithful and will never leave us or forsake us.
As you wrestle with impatience, as you grow disappointed with your current progress, and you despair over the lack of transformation and victory, hear the words of the Apostle Paul and take heart:
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:1-4)
Your life is hidden in Christ in God. Much of the growth that is taking place—the maturing of your character, the softening of your heart, the transformation of your will and desires—is taking place out of sight, even for you. Your responsibility is simply to set your sights on Jesus daily and press into journeying with Him. Trust in the slow work of God in your life—and in the lives of others. He will carry to completion that good work He has begun in us. You focus on embracing today’s leg of the trail and tackling it with your Savior who loves you.
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