Accept the anxiety of 2018...a post by Tom
Happy New Year! I hope it is a slow, unstable, gradual, and anxious one for you. Could you imagine getting a card with this in it? Well, the following words from Teilhard shed light on what this spiritual formation process feels like. The ending part on "accepting the anxiety" has ministered to me greatly. I thought them worthy of reflection for 2018.
“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.We are quite naturally impatient in everythingto reach the end without delay.We should like to skip the intermediate stages.We are impatient of being on the way to somethingunknown, something new.And yet it is the law of all progressthat it is made by passing throughsome 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 circumstancesacting on your own good will)will make of you tomorrow.Only God could say what this new spiritgradually forming within you will be.Give Our Lord the benefit of believingthat his hand is leading you,and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”