PATIENT TRUST

in

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 Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

NO LONGER A FRIEND OF NARNIA

in

“My sister Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia.”  

“Whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia she says, ‘What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.’”

”She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up.”  

“Grown-up indeed. I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.” 

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

 

DON'T DO IT.

in

Don't do it. Get out of it any way you can for both yourselves. You would never dream where the path you have chosen is going to lead you. 

So how can I wish undone the thing they are on the threshold of doing without wishing myself undone? I would have not missed the shot at the world that their misalliance gave me. 

Frederick Buechner, The Eyes of the Heart