The Story of Patience

A man who is a master of patience is a master of everything else.  —George Savile

Nobody likes to wait – not really – not unless you have a super-equipped iPhone or tablet to read, email or text on to pass the time. But waiting is part of life, part of humbleness, and part of the antidote to the deadly sin of Wrath.

Chapter One:
Born from Hostility

Anger is not a sin. Anger is a chemical, bodily response to frustrating stimuli. You’re cut off in traffic, or you miss the nail with a hammer and hit your thumb – anything can set the adrenaline pumping, but this is a good and natural response to pain. Hostility is more like the deadly sin of Wrath because it pours out of a judgmental attitude. Hostility craves revenge – the slower and the colder the better – and pursues the kind of judgments that God alone is qualified to make. We will need to renounce our hostilities to move forward toward Patience. We will need to surrender all justice and judgment to God alone, and we will receive and remember God’s mercies to us when we too are deserving of his wrath.

Chapter Two: To Forgive

What is our Patience diet? What do we need to love more than revenge or personal justice in order to grow truly patient? If we can learn to love some-thing more than our own need for justice, then we have a good chance of growing out of our hostility. We can start by remembering how much our own sin has grieved the heart of God and how Christ took all the revenge upon himself. God forgives us and we must learn to forgive each other. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Matthew 6: 14-15: For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Our task is to live the new life in the Spirit rather than life in the flesh. We seek to let God’s judgment suffice for all things, and let his Word feed us lead us to forgive.

Chapters Three & Four:
Cheek-Turning

So what does Patience really look like as we try to live it out day to day? We see it in people who are not slaves to anger – people who are temperate and mindful of the good of others, even above their own good.

When Jesus instructs us to turn the other cheek when struck, it is a clear affront to our natrual reactions. We pursue a different way of looking at the world and being in it. We look at things as Christ calls us to see them and not as we would simply like to do. We are on a path from dog-eat-dog competition toward the kind of mercy that God shows to us. Our credo is not to get even or to get the other guy before he gets you, but rather to love all and serve all in Jesus’ name. This difference – this different way of looking at life and being in the world – is not something we do by ourselves alone; it is something we seek for the whole Church and our congregation in particular. We learn to recognize Patience as practiced by our brothers and sisters and to encourage it wherever it is found. We affirm and applaud those who are naturally-gifted with Patience and point them out to our young as examples of what we all hope to become.

Chapter Five: In His Time

Christianity is built upon Patience as much as any other faith system or ideology, perhaps moreso. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus promised he would return and said that he would do so soon. The Church has been waiting for his return ever since. Generations and centuries have come and gone, and the Church has persisted in its mission undaunted and without losing the least bit of faith. To wait is to confess that God alone is in control and that God alone will say when time is time enough. Our work is set before us: we are to proclaim the good news of Jesus’ love and forgiveness until there is no one left who hasn’t heard the story. As we wait and work, we rejoice in the hope of God’s promises being finally fulfilled.

Waiting may be difficult, but what of it? Even the word itself – patience – comes from the Greek word which is literally long-suffering.

Patience keeps us depending on something other than our own time tables, our own agendas, our own goals and plans for the future; and instead, we live this life in faithfulness toward God’s promised kingdom, which we believe will arrive when the time is right –in God’s own time. On that day, we will all understand.