Patience…

I am not a patient person; few people are.  On a scale of one to ten, my urgency is in the high nineties.  Being a Southerner, I know not to be rude, but I do not understand why people at the Drive-thru window take ten minutes to give their money and get their food.  Come on people, I have places to go, people to see, fish to fry. 

COVID19 has slowed me down.  I have no places to go, no people to see, no fish to fry.  Being stuck in the house all day long brings my anxiety out in full force.  When my wife asks me how my day went, I feel like a broken record: answered email, made calls, got ready for Sunday.  Setting fire to the furniture is starting to sound exciting, just to break up the day. 

Technology is not helping me be patient.  If I must wait in line or wait for my doctor, my phone beckons me to check my email, send a text, read the news, or play a game.  I thought about downloading a meditation app the other day, but I’m afraid it would take too long.  Though I don’t agree with the protesters who demand opening the economy and letting people die, I understand them.  After nine weeks of quarantine your judgment gets warped in the direction of “Let’s do something!”  When urgency and anxiety take control, wisdom is the first casualty.  One definition of patience I saw said, “Patience is what you have when there are too many witnesses.”  One dictionary says patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.”  When I was a child and asked, “How much longer till we get there,” my mother defined patience as “Be patient or I will give you something to be patient about”  That definition made no sense to me, but I kept my mouth shut the rest of the trip. 

In the Bible, patience is waiting with hope.  When God is present in your life, he brings patience to you.  Patience flows out of your soul as resilience, peace, and steadfastness.  A good Biblical word, “long-suffering,” is a byproduct of patience.  You hope because you know you are not in charge; God is. Jesus, perfect in every way, was patient.  He is never described as being in a hurry.  Once a man begged him to come and heal his daughter.  Jesus agreed and was on the way to the man’s house.  A woman touched him and was healed.  Jesus stopped his errand and focused on this woman, pronouncing a blessing over her faith.  When word came that the daughter had died, Jesus did not say, “If only I hadn’t stopped for that other woman!”  Instead, he calmly proceeded to the home and brought the daughter back. Jesus was cool under pressure. 

Over and over God is described as patient. He was definitely “long-suffering” with the Israelites, who would give themselves completely to him one moment, then turn and worship other gods the next.  If I were God, I would have wiped them out on the second mess up and started over.  But God stuck with his people for centuries.  He tried to get their attention with prophets, with foreign conquerors.  If patience was graded on a ten-point scale, God gets a million points. 

Think how patient God is with you. You promised him over and over you would improve your life: you would start that diet, stop your temper, work on your relationships, be more generous.  Maybe you know you need to stop the pattern of self-destruction in your life.  The cycle of self-sabotage and shame needs to end.  You want to fix it all today, but your soul doesn’t seem to work that way.  But God does not let go of you.  He does not give up on you.  He hangs in there with you, patient with the messiness of your life. 

My favorite verse in the Bible is Isaiah 40:31: “Those that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.  They will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.”  Learning to wait on God is energy renewing.  It requires surrendering your timetable, your agenda, your anxiety, your urgency to God.  To wait on God means you open yourself to receive his gift of patience. 

How do you do this?  Take a minute, just a minute.  Still your soul.  Close your eyes.  Repeat: “Not my will but yours.”  Feel your heart-rate slow.  Feel your breaths lengthen.  Say it again: “Not my will but yours.”  Hear God’s gentle whisper back: “Now you are on the right timetable. – mine.” 

Suffering for Jesus …

In college, my friend Jon Roebuck was selected to be a semester missionary in Hawaii.  Specifically, he was to serve on the island of Oahu, on Waikiki Beach - which prompted all of us to accuse him of suffering for Jesus on the sands of Waikiki.  It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.

I never got to suffer for Jesus in Hawaii.  God sent me instead to places like Wauchula, Finchville, Louisville, and Sumter – not exactly places of glamor and exotic intrigue.  I suffered through a few church business meetings, but on the whole, my suffering has been pretty light.  Most of my time in these places has been air-conditioning and indoor plumbing.

To tell the truth, I never liked suffering that much.  I do know people who believe you have to be miserable to follow Jesus, and they are.  They are so convinced of the necessity of suffering that they try to make you suffer as well.  Usually five minutes of conversation with these folks fills your quota of suffering for the month.

I try not to whine to our Heavenly Father, but sometimes I do want to complain.  Why did my trailer have a flat tire on a hot day in July?  Why did my friend get called to pastor that big church and not me?  Why can a skinny man eat a gallon of ice cream and not gain a pound, but if I smell a potato chip, I add five pounds?    

There is a large group of Christians who believe they are suffering persecution for our faith in this country.  I’m not too sure about that.  After all, we are still able to gather freely to worship and to pray.  Starbucks eliminating “Merry Christmas” from our coffee cups is not suffering.  Maybe Jesus followers don’t get their way politically as much as we used to, but Jesus is probably okay with that.   He never put much stock in political power anyway.

American Jesus followers are not very good at suffering.  People have told me they will no longer attend our church unless: a) We start singing songs they like; b) I follow their ideas about what church should be like; c) We accept doctrine taught by the famous TV Evangelist of their choice; or d) All of the above.  Once, we had thunderstorms move through on a Sunday morning and I was called by an irate church member who wanted to know why we were having church when the weather was so bad.  However, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and earthquakes couldn’t keep her away from a Clemson ballgame. 

I read these words not too long ago: “But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed (1 Peter 3:14a).”  There is a blessing in suffering for what is right.  I look at a verse like that and I wonder if my faith is strong enough to suffer for what is right.

It was not that long ago that churches in the South actually voted on whether or not to admit African-Americans to worship services.  More often than not, the vote was no.  There were always people, however, who stood up for what was right and voted “yes.”  They suffered.  They lost friends.  Family members would not speak to them.  Pastors lost their jobs.  People left organized Christianity with the bitter taste of hypocrisy in their mouths.

I know a man who was offered a shady business deal involving a bribe to a government official.  He turned it down.  He believed Jesus meant it when he said: “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’.  Anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” He suffered financially.  A competitor got the job and made a ton of money and nearly ran my relative out of business.  Honesty often carries the price tag of suffering.

There are people in this world who do suffer for their faith.  Ask a Christian in Muslim culture if they suffer.  Ask the Christian business man in India who is shut out of government permits if he suffers.  Ask the woman who heard a missionary talk about Jesus and believed, and then her husband killed her – oops, you can’t ask her, because she died for her faith.  I have a feeling none of these people were worried about the music at church or what TV preacher to believe.  Their faith was precious to them.

Have the courage to do right.  Even if you suffer, there is a blessing.  The blessing is more than a clear conscience.  The blessing is hearing your Heavenly Father say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”