A couple of years ago, I arrived back in Beijing on about March 17. A few days later, I noticed that the lilac bushes in my apartment complex that were in bloom for my birthday (at the beginning of April) the year before didn’t even have buds, yet. I sadly assumed that there would be no lilacs for my birthday that year. I was wrong. The weather warmed up and the lilacs were in bloom for my birthday. And usually, by the end of April Beijing temperatures are pushing 90F.
Beijing’s instant gratification spring, April 2017
I haven’t spent spring in Michigan for many years. I had forgotten how different spring in Michigan is from spring in Beijing. Although the snow hasn’t been sticking to the ground much in April, it hasn’t been warm. There are some early flowers, but most of them haven’t bloomed yet. I went for a walk in the woods and dunes last Friday and today. There is more green than a week ago, but there is still much more brown than green. Spring in Michigan is a long and slow process. Instead of the few weeks that it takes in Beijing, in Michigan spring takes months. Months of waiting and longing (and some complaining) for greenery and warm temperatures. And it always comes, eventually. Sometimes years it takes longer than others. But eventually spring comes into bloom.
This stuttering spring is teaching me something about spring. God doesn’t always work as quickly as I’d like. And yet, God is always at work, even when I can’t see it yet. And sometimes we just get glimpses, like the tiny wildflowers pushing through the soil right now.
Michigan’s delayed gratification spring, May 1, 2020
I was reminded of this poem/prayer two times in the past few days, “trust in the slow work of God.” The glimpses of green I saw in the woods this morning reminded me of these words. And they are my prayer for this season of my life, as well.
Patient Trust
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 excerpted from Hearts on Fire and found on this website
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