Waiting

Soul Keeping

For the past several weeks, we have been woking through John Ortberg’s material entitled, Soul Keeping.  It has been a grace-filled study, offering inspiration and instruction for intentionally tending to one’s soul.  In relation to traveling “The Dark Night of the Soul,” here is a quote, delicately nestled in the discussion worth contemplation.  I post these for your meditation.  These are originally the words of Frederick Faber (cited below).

I pray you let the Holy Spirit wash your spirit with these thoughts and massage these ideas into the recesses of your heart and life where they are most needed, that you may find rest for your soul.

In the spiritual life [God chooses] to try our patience first of all by his slowness. . . . He is slow: we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and he has been from eternity. . . . There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them. . . . We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the cold and the dark. Wait, and he will come. He never comes to those who do not wait. He does not go to their road. When he comes, go with him, but go slowly, fall a little behind; when he quickens his pace, be sure of it, before you quicken yours. But when he slackens, slacken at once. And do not be slow only, but silent, very silent, for he is God.

Frederick Faber, Growth in Holiness (Baltimore: John Murphy and Co., 1855), 116, 117, 120.