On Patience, Wisdom from Saint Isaac, and What Cannot Be Rushed

A Note from Me

Behind my chair sits a ficus tree I bought four years ago. I imagined by now it would be taller, stretching its branches wide. Instead, it stayed small. I know why—too little water, too small a pot.

Six months ago I started giving it more water, more soil, and a bigger container. Now I see new lime-green leaves pushing out. It’s growing!

During that four year period, I often thought about just buying a taller tree, one that would fill the room. But I know now what would have been lost.

I would have had a bigger tree, but I wouldn't be any bigger.

I wouldn't have grown. I wouldn’t have learned. Through my blunder I’ve become a little stronger gardener. And that, I think, is the mercy of it. Growth can still happen through blunders—maybe especially through them.

I think love grows like this too...it grows through our blunders—the times we forget to water, the seasons when we’re distracted.

I don’t know, maybe our failings slow growth down, maybe they don’t. Maybe our failings are mysteriously a part of a deeper kind of growth happening below the surface of our life. Who knows?

But here’s what we do know, none of it can stop God. He will grow us into his loving likeness.

And in the end, our joy will not just be realized in what we’ve grown into, but in having been given the privilege of growing itself.

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A Voice from the Past

“We must not rush onward to great measures before the time, lest God’s gift be debased by our hasty reception of it. For anything that is quickly obtained is also easily lost, whereas everything found with toil is also kept with careful watching.”

—Saint Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies

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A Question to Carry

How could tending one thing slowly change your view of love?

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Thanks for reading,

—Jon