"Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new….Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
I find myself plowing through what seems like slow work these days. I have many servings on my work plate that are ‘in process’ and have been for some time.Churches everywhere are also involved in ‘slow work’, fairly sure where they have been, somewhat sure of where they are, and for most, clueless about where they are being called into the future. Each day our country and world leaders take up their ‘slow work’….poverty, homelessness, injustice, war, a never ending hope for peace. Perhaps the lesson in all that is that anything important, anything of worth, comes from slow work.
Oh, my, how we wish it weren’t so! In our culture which so often allows us to get whatever we want quickly, without fuss or inconvenience, to be involved in slow work is painful. Where is the drive-through fix for this problem? Can’t I just pop this in the microwave be done with it? Can’t I pay someone to do this for me?
Advent engages us in slow work. The birth of the Christ child, the in-breaking of God, is both celebration and process. Advent is a now and ‘not yet’ time. As we walk toward the celebration of Christmas, we also mark the waiting of giving birth, the steps toward a yet-to-be-realized peace, the anticipation of an unfulfilled longing that goes deeper than words. Advent requires patience of us.
So today may we invite patience into our lives. Just as a child takes nine months to be born, so any new thing takes the slow work of growing,of changing shape, of forming in ways that are beyond our imagination. Who knows what wants to be born from our work, our lives? Perhaps in the slow work of walking with Spirit, we might walk confidently toward this new birth.
This is my prayer…………..