Margaret Silf: “God’s dream in our hearts is a tender but all-powerful seed.”
Nehemiah lived out his sealed order when he returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls and faced all sorts of opposition. He’s sent wrong prophecies and wrong friends. Nehemiah chapter 6: Nehemiah says, “I am carrying on a great project and I cannot come off the wall.”
Proverbs 19:2 Desire without knowledge is not good, how much more will hasty feet miss the way.
The early church fathers wrote a lot about the virtue of discretion. They defined discretion as the ability to wait, to see what unfolds and not act. It involves the humility and patience to discern when to leave things alone and knowing when our interference will only complicate things (John Cassian’s Conferences).
Rainer Maria Rilke (German poet) Letters to a Young Poet quote (paraphrased)
“Let your judgments (discernment) come from deep within, and cannot it be any way pressed or hurried. Allow every germ of a feeling to grow to completion, wholly in yourself in the darkness, and await with deep humility and patience the hour of birth of a new clarity. There is no measuring of time there, a year there has no meaning, and ten years are nothing, but it only comes to the patient ones.” “We want to ripen like a tree that does not force its sap”, “we want to stay confident in a storm during spring that summer will eventually come”.
David fled from Saul for 10-13 years.
Rilke quote #2 (paraphrased)
“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart, do not search for answers now which cannot be given you, because you could not live them. It’s a matter of living everything; live the question now, perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer.”
When we’re waiting, we’re not doing nothing- we’re allowing our soul to grow up and allowing ourselves to become the person God wants us to be. Waiting is a gestation process that allows God’s will to unfold in us.
All these practices need a spacious and slowed down spirituality and awareness of your vulnerabilities (your genogram, triggers, shadow that come out of your history).