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Sunday, May 2, 2010

Spiritual Transformation


Spiritual transformation doesn’t take place on Sunday when we get what we want. It takes place on Saturday while we’re waiting. It’s what is forged while we’re waiting, hoping, trusting, [and working] even though we have yet to receive that for which we long. 
~Pete Wilson

Or as Sue Monk Kidd (When the Heart Waits) put it:

Transformations come only as we go the long way round, only as we’re willing to walk a different, longer, more arduous, more inward, more prayerful route. When you wait, you’re deliberately choosing to take the long way, to go eight blocks instead of four, trusting that there’s a transforming discovery lying pooled along the way.


When Jim and I were working hard to “transform” a bankrupt company, I hung a framed farmfield print (cut from a calendar), above my desk. Beneath the picture it said:

There is no royal road to anything…
That which grows fast, withers as rapidly.
That which grows slowly endures.
   Josiah Gilbert Holland

This was the image I hung on to as we worked through the trials of our business life. Now I’m learning to apply it to my personal life as well. I’m trying to remember that Saturdays are needed if I want to fully experience Sunday.  That which grows slowly endures.

~~~

1 comment:

  1. Suddenly I feel better about how slowly I seem to be cleaning my life from the not-so-nice-things in it -- temper, impatience, and self-centeredness. They are all going away, but not as quickly as I'd hope.

    Enjoy this lovely day!

    Matty

    ReplyDelete