The slow work 

Some nights after dinner, a pan has food stuck inside. No matter how I scrub, the grime won’t budge. I wrestle with it, but I can’t get it clean. So, after the rest of the dishes are loaded into the dishwasher, I fill the pan with soap and water and leave it to soak in the sink. 

Then I go to bed. 

Call me lazy. Call me tired. Call me hopeful that someone else in the house will be inspired to scrub it instead. But it’s an effective approach. 

Yes, sometimes, the pan is still dirty the next day. Then I have to pull out a Brillo pad and keep working at it for a while. But many mornings, I find the soap and water have done the trick. They’ve loosened the sludge that was cemented to the pan the night before. All I have to do is give it a little attention with a soapy sponge and water, and the pan is as good as new. 

Now, ideally, I would make sure everything is sparkling clean, so we can wake up to a spotless sink and cupboards full of shiny pots and pans every morning. But sometimes letting the problem wait for tomorrow is the best option. It saves time, and the soap and water do the work that I won’t – or can’t – do myself. When that happens, it feels almost like a miracle that the pan is clean after such little effort. What felt impossible the night before becomes manageable in the morning light. 

Knowing when to step away from a task can be hard. There’s so much that we want to accomplish. We want to solve all the problems – in our families, in our community, and maybe even those in our nation and our world. We can certainly make a difference in many ways. But sometimes the problems are bigger or more complex. Sometimes we can’t see the right path forward. There are times when the best approach – and maybe the only approach – might be to set a problem down, step away and turn it over to God. 

God can lighten our burdens and open doors. He can help us find a way forward or even just find peace and accept things as they are. As much as we want to solve problems on our own, sometimes the best solution is to get out of the way, ask God for help and let his grace enter in. 

As we move through the holiest days of the year and celebrate Easter, God reminds us that he can bring healing and hope, overcome death and turn sorrow to rejoicing. Imagine Jesus’ Apostles who must have been plunged into grief and despair on Good Friday. In their confusion and sadness, they must have felt so helpless. The truth is that they could do nothing but pray. Sometimes prayer is the best option.  

That can be true for us, too. No matter what we are wrestling with, we can hand it to God and trust that he will ease the pain and bring light to the situation. We just might need to acknowledge we aren’t in control. We might need to be patient and let God lead. 

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God,” said the late Jesuit Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. “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.” 

As much as we want to keep trying to fix a problem, maybe this is the time to hand it over to God. We can place whatever is troubling us into his hands, trusting that he will walk with us, moving mountains we cannot move and preparing us for the next step on our journey.  

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