God Speed

What is God’s speed?
 
I imagine the first response of many is to say, “not fast enough.” For life is filled with conditions that we endure in which we long for a speedy ending. Our prayers are often for God to move to accomplish something more quickly, in a timely manner that would reduce our discomfort or the suffering of someone we care about.
 
We can find ourselves to be the child in the van on the road trip who asks, “Are we there yet?” after they’ve finished the snack 15 minutes into a 4 day journey.
 
I read an account of a pilgrimage that was taken along the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile trail along the North of Spain that has been travelled for hundreds of years. I learned of this path from Emilio Estevez’s movie, “The Way” and have felt a growing desire to make that pilgrimage myself someday. 
 
This Camino de Santiago provides a physical path for spiritual reflection as the pilgrim connects with nature, sacred sites and other pilgrims while moving at a walking pace…the pace Jesus traveled. 
 
In the middle of this journey there is a section that is known as the “dreaded Meseta,” wherein the walking can become drudgery. By this point one’s feet have started to take a beating and the miles seem to pass slowly. Some people try to rent bikes, or take a bus through this section in order to avoid it.
 
But we have all experienced some of those “Meseta” times in our lives where life moves too slowly for our liking. Where the suffering is long, or the monotony of the regular things seems to wear us out.  

Yet, important things are accomplished in these seasons… both in individuals and in congregations. God is doing some formational work, the type that can only be accomplished through endurance and perseverance. (see Romans 5:1-5) 
 
Those are the times that I realize God’s speed is not, and doesn't need to be, up to my modern standards. There is a long view of things that are being accomplished which our human eyes often only see in hindsight.

And so, when we find ourselves in this type of season, may we return to the God of the long-view with our cares and concerns, deepening our trust in the One who cares for us and provides what we need along the journey.
 
A prayer poem…
 
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.
 
By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

In His Grip,
Pastor Nathan