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A Word from Ally
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the Board of Pensions’ CREDO conference for recently ordained pastors. Each day during our time of worship, we chanted the words “trust the slow work of God,” words that are inspired by Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Charin’s prayer “Patient Trust.” I have found myself singing this tune since my return, sometimes from a centered, confident, and peaceful place and other times with a frustrated, anxious, and even resentful tone. It really depends, in all honesty, on how much of the day I have spent watching the news or thinking about the election. But this call to trust the slow work of God attunes my heart and mind to the ways that the grace of God is alive and active in the world, even amidst all the chaos. So, even if you have to say with an annoyed and anxious heart, may you too trust the slow work of God.
Peace,
Ally
"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 through 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, S.J. (1881-1955)
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