I read this in reviewing my journal recently. It has to do with learning to find joy in genuine intentions that have yet to find an opportunity to be put into action:
“Rejoice to feel yourself growing and developing within, even although your external actions are sometimes thwarted. To be thwarted should seem the normal thing and should not interfere in any way with the vitality you feel stirring within you. Something will certainly come out of it. Desire and strive after any results you like and which seem to you good and possible (or even impossible) but never be put out if things do not turn out exactly ‘to your liking. The soul grows in the midst of all this and, like the mustard seed cast into the earth, becomes like a great tree.”
(Abbé Henri de Tourville. Letters of Direction. Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 1939, 2001, p. 33-34.)
[...] “The Joy of Growing” (4/8/09) – God knows our heart and intentions as well as He knows our actions. [...]