Early this week, Fritz Dale, the director of ReachNational of the Evangelical Free Church of America referred to this statement in a devotion. It is particularly apt in the context of dreaming big dreams about the future and living "in the land in between."
I highlighted some choice phrases that I have been reflecting on this week. How important it is to balance this perspective with the "driving" side of leadership in pursuit of God's better future!
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.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that 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.
Do not 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 in 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. Amen.