LENTEN DEVOTION - DAY 1

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.

~ Pierre Tielhard de Chardin

God’s work is sometimes very, very, painfully, slow. When I created this graphic I used a picture of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley to communicate the slowness of God’s work. It’s hard for us to imagine, but the carving of Yosemite Valley took somewhere between 1 million and 2 million years, with glaciers finding their way along a path, breaking up stone and earth along the way; even carving away half of a granite mountain to make this iconic shape. When I was in high school, I joined a week-long field trip to Yosemite with my biology class, where we learned about the creation of this deep gash in the mountain range. As we stood on top of a granite ledge and looked out at the valley, I imagined watching the glacier moving along its path, millimeter upon millimeter, until it had swept before it the remnants of stone and rock. The movement isn’t discernible, but the impact of it definitely is.

Sometimes it feels like God’s work is that slow. So slow that we can’t see anything happening and it’s hard to believe that there could possibly be progress, much less improvement in this standstill we are stuck in. But when we look back we can see the changes that have been crafted, creating something beautiful and awe-inspiring.

One of my favorite contemplative authors, Cynthia Bourgeault, says it this way (Mona’s paraphrase): God is at work, even if you don’t feel it or see it. Sometimes God is working in you in such a deep place that it’s inaccessible to you. But don’t fret - God is at work. And it’s none of your business what God is doing.

So this Lenten season, let’s sit back and enjoy the slowness. God is not in a hurry - why should we be? If you find yourself tired and worn out listen to the way Eugene Peterson restates Jesus’s message:

 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-30 MSG)

Yosemite Valley from the air. Photo by Mona. Look at that gash.