So yesterday (Sunday, Nov. 27) was the first Sunday of Advent. I taught a class on Spiritual Practices for Advent. I preached a sermon about Advent. And in the afternoon I went shopping for gifts for a family who cannot afford Christmas presents. This meant I waited in line at Kohl's. And I was impatient.
We preachers are always talking about the spiritual value in waiting, and I guess I need to keep preaching about it, because I'm not quite "there" yet. I know what I want, and I want it now. But maybe I've gotten a little better. I've learned . . . good things come to those who wait.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit priest, said it even better:
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 pasing through some stages of instability . . . and that it may take a very long time.
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