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.
–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
This spring I took on a photo project. Starting back in mid-April, I picked a tulip bed in Holland, MI’s Centennial Park and took a picture of it every week. It was a late blooming variety and some weeks I went and was surprised at how little progress they had made. When they did bloom, they were beautiful!
I’ve been reflecting on this prayer about the slow work of God, and it reminds me of my experience with the tulips. I was sometimes impatient with the bulbs, wishing for the glory of the colored petals. And yet, slowly, week to week, the tulips developed. They needed each day and each stage to reach their full beauty. I pray that it is the same for me. I wait on the slow work of God, sometimes impatient during the intermediate stages, and I can only trust that it will all bloom as planned.
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