On Being a Work in the Hands of God
A Reflection on Shams El Tabriz
“God is busy with the completion of your work, both outwardly and inwardly. He is fully occupied with you.”
There is something profoundly comforting, and quietly unsettling, about this teaching from Shams of Tabriz. It dismantles the modern obsession with arrival, completion, and spiritual perfection, and replaces it with a far more intimate truth: we are already being tended to.
Not later.
Not when we heal one more wound.
Not when we finally “figure it all out.”
We are being tended to now.
Shams´ words remind us that every human being is a work in progress, slowly but inexorably moving toward perfection. Not a perfection imposed from outside, but one that is revealed through time, experience, failure, devotion, and love. This is not the perfection of flawlessness, it is the perfection of becoming.
So often we live as if we are behind. Behind in our healing. Behind in our spiritual maturity. Behind in our purpose. We look at others and imagine they have arrived somewhere we have not. But what Shams of Tabriz shares gently dissolves that illusion.
There is no standardized timeline for the soul. And the beauty is, yes, we are unfinished work!
We are unfinished because we are alive.
Humanity is a fine art of skilled penmanship, where every single dot matters. In sacred calligraphy, a single dot can change the meaning of an entire word. Remove it, rush it, or misplace it, and the whole image loses coherence.
We are one of those dots.
Not interchangeable.
Not replaceable.
Not insignificant.
God deals with each of us separately. Not as a mass project, not as a collective abstraction, but with the intimacy of an artist who knows exactly where each stroke belongs. This means that what is unfolding in our life—our joys, our griefs, our delays, our detours—is not accidental.
Even what feels like stagnation is part of the artistry.
There are seasons when God works outwardly: shaping our circumstances, relationships, vocations, and paths. And there are seasons when the work is inward: softening the heart, dismantling false identities, teaching patience, humility, and trust.
Often, we only recognize the work in retrospect.
What if the places where we feel most unfinished are precisely where the deepest refinement is taking place?
What if our confusion is not a sign of failure, but of transformation?
If every soul is an unfinished work of divine art, then comparison becomes meaningless. Judgment becomes absurd. Harsh self-criticism loses its authority.
Instead, we are invited into reverence.
Reverence for the slow work.
Reverence for the mystery of timing.
Reverence for the unseen hand shaping us, even when we cannot yet see the design.
Life is not an easy path. But we still must remember that we have not been abandoned.
God is still working.
God is paying attention.
God has not put you aside unfinished.
And perhaps the greatest spiritual practice is not striving to complete ourselves, but learning to cooperate with the hands that are already at work—through trust, surrender, devotion, and love. Our story is not waiting to be written someday; it is being written in this very moment.
I am wishing all of you a blessed Magdalene Shabbat day.
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AHAVA,
Ana Otero
