Gradual formation

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 will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say
what this new spirit
gradually forming
within you will be.

Give the Lord
the benefit of believing
that God's hand will lead you.
And accept the anxiety
of feeling yourself

in suspense
and incomplete.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.