Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. ~ Romans 12:2 NRSV
Nine-year-old granddaughter Anne-Sophie just began the process of getting braces, something that her grandpa, father, and two cousins have experienced. It will be a several-year process of gradually moving teeth and changing her bite, a process of gradual transformation that involves repeated visits to the orthodontist, not eating things that can cause the braces to break, special toothbrushing protocols, and more than a little pain. It is the slow work of orthodonture to work a gradual transformation.
In our world of fast food and immediate gratification, it is a metaphor for our own spiritual journeys, the Slow Work of God* (see below). It involves ups and downs, twists and turns and emergency visits to the orthodontist to set things time after time on the right path. Our spiritual formation can be awkward, painful with necessary emergency prayers seeking God’s wisdom, mixed in with periods of smooth sailing. The transformation is always good and acceptable and perfect in the end.
For patience with the slow work of God. ~ Anne
*Trust in the Slow Work of God ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955)
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.
Wayfinding 