Willing to Wait
Compassion and Mercy
Reflection By Robbin Brent
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"Patient” is not an attribute my family and close friends would choose to describe me. It might not even make it into the top ten. Yet, as the above quote tells us, patient trust is what will allow us to better see how God’s work in the world is unfolding, and how God is asking us to more fully participate in God’s dreams for the world made manifest through us.
Patience and compassion are closely related at their root and can mean to suffer, to endure, to experience, or to wait. They also are defined as God’s passion, as God’s great love and hope for the world. So if patience, compassion, mercy, and God’s love are interwoven, how do we get better at being patient, of trusting more fully in God’s timing? In yesterday’s reflection, Scott Stoner shared the Seven Acts of Mercy as important ways of living compassionately through what we do. He invited us to a practice of prayerfully seeking God’s guidance for how we might offer one of those acts of mercy to someone in our lives. This is a wonderful way to practice putting our trust more fully in God’s timing.
If we can be patient with ourselves as we learn to be more fully present with another in their suffering, and to respond out of a desire to help in some way, we are better able to call upon the gifts, or fruits, of compassion: kindness, mercy, empathy, goodness, and forgiveness. Patience and trust will also strengthen our ability to notice when God is asking us to be the arms of love and mercy in the world. We get better at trusting God’s timing more than our own.
Making it Personal: What do you think about the connection between having patience and trust and being better able to respond with compassion and mercy to the needs of the world, others, and ourselves? What is one practice that might help you to be more patient? Do you have a quote, poem, or prayer that might inspire your desire to trust more deeply in the way God is working through you in the world?