A Prayer for Patient Trust

Below is one of my favorite written prayers: Patient Trust, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Occasionally, in spiritual direction, I find this prayer prompt a meaningful time of reflection and encouragement to trust God through whatever season you might you might be in.

Read through the prayer below a few times, with some space between each reading. After mulling over these words, journal your thoughts. There are prompts at the end that may help you get started.

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.

• As you read this prayer what phrases linger in your mind and feel significant.
• As you reflect on this experience of this prayer, what might God be saying to you about this season you are in?
• How might you want to respond to God -- whether 'positively' or 'negatively'?