The Slow Work of God

Written by Eliana Ziman, Fellows Class of 2026

November 26th, the day before Thanksgiving, I was at the Chattanooga airport trying to get home to Chicago. Due to snow storms in the Midwest (no surprise there) my flight had been delayed all afternoon and in an attempt to practice rest, I had only brought a single book to read on the flight – my laptop, notebooks, and other readings were left at my host family’s home.

I could feel myself getting more and more frustrated as the day went on. I was reading a chapter in Practicing the King’s Economy on Sabbath but was kicking myself for not having brought any of the other many things on my to-do list. But as I worked through the Sabbath chapter, the Lord was convicting me. In this moment before the holidays, God had gifted me with an unexpected afternoon of Sabbath rest. I wasn’t in a cute, cozy, or quiet setting. I was frustrated and antsy and a little hungry. But God was telling me to take a breath.

In this same book the author describes the book of Exodus and the difference between Pharaoh's economy of constant work and God’s economy of a day of rest and trusting in daily bread. Like the Israelites, I sometimes still crave the busyness and certainty of Pharoah’s economy. I want to be doing unique and meaningful work in my job. I want to be serving the city in visibly impactful ways. I want my struggles and doubts to be resolved through a book. I want to feel productive, useful, like my time is worth something. But the beauty of Christ’s kingdom is that our time is always worth something because our lives are God’s, not our own. Unfilled time is not wasted time. Slowing down doesn’t remove us from being useful to God or the world, but is a gift of grace as we walk in step with him.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Fellows it’s that work is profoundly good. And yet, as Tim Keller says, “Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person” (Every Good Endeavor). God is using this time of slowness in my life to teach me that my identity is not in my work and that my life is not about doing productive things for God. I (and all of us) are called to live with God, walking alongside him instead of trying to run ahead. Like my unexpected airport Sabbath, I’m learning to pay attention to the moments of slowness that he’s already built into my life.

While I don’t keep any kind of consistent day of Sabbath, and I’m still impatient, crave productivity, and feel my blood start to boil when I get stuck behind a slow car, God is teaching me that his slowness is better than my productivity. I could fill every moment of my life with work and it still wouldn’t be enough – God wants me to place my life into the patient goodness of his.

One of my favorite prayers is from the French Priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (see full prayer below), and the last lines are my prayer for this new year:

“Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”

The Slow Work of God

by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—

and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.