I’ll try to make this quick! Our modern life is largely defined by impatience. We buy stuff online and get frustrated when it takes more than two days to arrive. On the roads, especially in New Jersey, the posted speed limit is 50, you’re (allegedly) going 70, and you still get passed constantly. We can get so focused on the destination that we neglect the journey. We don’t want to get there; we want to be there.

Unfortunately, getting there is the most important part. In 2 Peter 3:8-9 it says, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

Peter is largely talking about the time when Christ will return to reclaim the world. We are called to live hopefully and expectantly of Christ’s return, as if it could happen at any time. However, while we wait, we are also supposed to grow ourselves as believers in Christ, and share the hope that we have found with the people around us.

Theologian and Jesuit Priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would 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. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vinedresser.”

In our rush to be at some future there, we forget to see and experience the now. God has called you to be where you are “for such a time as this.” Live into the needs that are around you. Have patience as you grow.

Trust in the slow work of God.