God's Perfect Timing

Yesterday I talked about trusting God 100%. Today, as I was attending a workshop at the Christian Community Development Association's National Conference one of the presenters used this prayer to start his session.

Patient Trust
by: Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

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.

Michael Harter, SJ, editor, Hearts on Fire, Praying with Jesuits (Chicago, Loyola Press, 1993, 2005) 102-3

As I read along with the presenter today it was as if God was talking directly to me. God's perfect timing is beautiful.

Do You Trust Me?

                It’s Monday again!  How fast the weekends seem to disappear and the may lay of doing is replaced with the quiet serenity of study.  There’s a forlornness that permeates my fourth floor study retreat as the golden rays of autumn’s first sun blaze through my window.  I should be lost in thick theological canundries and theological study but instead find myself drifting, basking really, in the soft gentle warmth blanketing my quiet corner.  My thoughts drift to my friends, my beat up Saucony running shoes, and the six-mile stretch of paradise, a paradise others may merely see as asphalt, that requires- demands- sweat and effort; this six mile stretch, including the sweat and effort, is pure ecstasy.  This is my world, a world I can control, a world in which I feel truly alive.  This world frees me from books and study and propels me into the world that comprises sweat, motion, and muscle fatigue.  Between these two worlds lies an unparalleled dichotomy that is my life, or, at least, the lens through which I see my life.

                The thing is, the more I live in this in between space, this dichotomy of persons, the more I realize that I am not that different from you or anybody else.  Well, with the exception of the running/ paradise thing, most people really do find that a little bizarre.  However, regarding the dichotomy of the person I am most comfortable being versus the person God is creating me to be, I believe we all struggle with, or against, this.  On the other hand, maybe it really is not the struggle between the two unique personalities as much as it is being willing to trust, 100%, what God is doing. Am I alone in this? Do you ever struggle with the issue of trusting God 100%?  I guess that’s really the question for this week, are we really willing to trust God 100%?  Even when what God is doing in our lives isn't exactly enjoyable.

                Now, before I am branded a heretic, or told that my faith isn’t big enough, please understand this definitely is not the way I always feel.  In fact, more often than not I am very excited about what God is doing in and through my life.  I count it a privilege to be able to pause my life long enough to obtain my Masters degree and enter full-time ministry.  I love the discipline of study, most of the time.  I love knowledge and I love sharing knowledge with other people. I am thrilled that my family is 100% behind me driving me forward. Nevertheless, I do need to admit that sometimes I am still human and have my doubts.  I hope you can understand these misgivings, maybe even enter into the conversation with me.  These are just my observations this week from the open road. 

Busted!!!

The first post of for the 2012 year will be up in a few days, promised. I took the liberty to clear out the old junk, stuff dating back to 2009, to make way for the new. Now I just have to create the new. As soon as I do I will post it and I promise I will do a better job of keeping the blog current this time.