In the hustle-bustle culture we find ourselves in, it is far too easy for us to become impatient with God’s work in our lives, to grasp for a perfection that is long in coming. If we aren’t careful, we begin to think of our spirituality in concepts (unconsciously) borrowed from the buy-and-sell goings-on of our materialistic society. We think in terms of “success” and “failure”. We look for easy techniques and simple ways to quantify and measure our spiritual “growth”. As if there were a spiritual stock market that would show if we were “up” or “down”.
Everything in our culture encourages this impatience, and our churches tend to do the same, if for different reasons. But God is not as anxious about our shortcomings as we are. In fact, He is more patient with us than we are with ourselves, though He is never lenient or careless. This Pierre Teilhard de Chardin poem, a personal favorite, makes the point very well.
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.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that 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.
Do not 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 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.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.
Amen.
Chardin is right, we have to accept the anxiety of feeling incomplete; we have to accept ourselves as being saints and sinners, both at once (simul justus et peccator). We have to live in the suspense, trusting ourselves to the God we can’t feel or see. If we cannot accept this, then we shall try to find another way. And that “finding another way” is the act of sin. It was this “finding another way” that led Eve to grasp the “fruit.” It was this “finding another way” that led Saul to offer the sacrifice without Samuel present. In the wilderness at the beginning and in the garden just before the end of Jesus’ ministry, Satan tempted Him to find another way.
“The essential thing in heaven and earth,” wrote Nietzsche, “is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction.” There are no short cuts; no bypasses. We’d better be in it for the duration.
The world’s slowest growing tree is a White Cedar. In 155 years it has grown to a height of 4 inches and weighs less than an ounce! (About the weight of a penny). Yet it is alive! Though Paul claimed to be “chief sinner,” I don’t know anyone who has claimed the title of “slowest-growing Christian.” Perhaps it is me. Or you. It doesn’t matter. The point is, if the divine life is at work in us, then we are growing, maturing, being sanctified. And that is what matters.
