The Holy Unfinished: Reflections on Providence the Obedience of Heart

Tonight I write with a quiet heart, aware that God’s providence is both hidden and near; inscrutable to the human mind, yet intimate in its care. The path He sets before a soul rarely conforms to its own desires or the expectations of others. Sometimes it unfolds in ways that appear contrary even to what reason or ecclesial order might predict. Yet within that seeming contradiction lies the ineffable wisdom of divine folly, the love that chose the Cross as its throne.

I have come to see that obedience to God’s will may lead one through narrow and unadorned places, where one’s hopes, however noble, are gently undone. This undoing is not punishment, but purification. When what seems good and fitting is withheld, when even holy desires are frustrated, it is often because God seeks to draw the heart into deeper surrender. The saints teach that what saves is not the fulfillment of one’s longings, but their transfiguration through obedience. The Cross does not destroy the soul; it burns away what is false in it.

St. Isaac the Syrian said that God’s grace often hides itself so that the soul might learn love without reward. St. John Climacus called this the blessed madness of humility; to accept not understanding, but to rest in faith. And Elder Sophrony, echoing the same mystery, wrote that the path of salvation always bears the imprint of divine kenosis: the self-emptying love that descends into weakness so that the power of God may be made manifest.

It is not for me to grasp why certain doors remain closed or why canonical order takes its time to move, as if the Spirit were content to leave me in a space without name. This, too, is obedience; not passive resignation, but trust in the will of Him who guides history through silence. I must learn to love the seeming absence of progress, to receive the slowness of Providence as a teacher.

Every delay, every uncertainty, can become an altar if offered with gratitude. The heart that has no claim learns to rest in what St. Isaac called the mercy of being nothing before God. What is redemptive is not found in possession or status, but in the relinquishing of them; in allowing one’s ego to die quietly, so that love alone may live.

It is perhaps here, in this obscurity, that the true monastic spirit ripens. To bear the cross of hiddenness without complaint, to seek neither justification nor recognition, is to share in the divine ethos of the Cross itself. For the Cross was not an accident of history but the eternal revelation of how God loves, not with power, but with humility; not with approval, but with sacrifice.

So I make peace with this uncharted obedience. The habit and the tonsure are not marks of attainment but reminders of surrender. They teach me daily that the will of God may appear as loss, yet it conceals the deepest gain; the death of self that gives birth to life.

And so I pray:

Lord, let me be content with Your ways, even when they humble me. Let me find joy in the folly of Your wisdom and rest in the quiet certainty that all things, even my incompletion, are held within Your mercy. Strip away in me all that seeks to control Your will. Teach me to love the Cross not as a burden but as the radiant sign of Your love.

If I walk without recognition, let it be in Your light. If I live without certainty, let it be within Your peace. For the only true canon is the one written upon the heart by grace, where obedience and love become one.