they say patience is a virtue.

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 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.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin -