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.” 

Coping with Quarantine…

It feels like Day 2,132 of quarantine.  In reality it’s been only a few weeks.  We’ve all had to find ways to cope. 

Extroverts are suffering more than the rest of us.  They keep ordering take-out just to see people.  Introverts only thought they liked social isolation.  They’ve binge watched everything possible on Netflix and are now watching reruns of MASH on YouTube.   

Thank goodness for good weather.  Most of the yards in my neighborhood now look like Augusta National Golf Course.  People who’ve never had a houseplant have put in gardens.  Ditto for home repair projects.  I actually talked to a man recently who told me he had finished all the home repair projects he’d put off for years and was now reorganizing his attic.  I told him to come over to my house when he got done. 

I’ve never seen so many people exercising.  I see walkers and runners out every day.  Old bikes are being rescued from forgotten corners of garages.  I saw a six-foot tall man riding a pink bike with a banana seat and high-rise handlebars.  You make do with what you have. 

With restaurants closed, home cooking is making a comeback.  I saw on Instagram a woman charting the progress of her “starter” for sour-dough bread.  I sent her message volunteering to be her taste-tester.  I told her, “Have butter, will travel.” 

My fisherman friends are spending a lot of time on the water, though I’m not sure how they are getting their boats in the lake.  I live on a little pond, and neighbors I’ve never seen fish are out there.  Most of them are throwing back what they catch, although I’ve heard rumors a couple of them are experimenting with homemade sushi. 

Sport fans like me are suffering.  When March Madness was called off, all the men who had scheduled their vasectomies in order to binge watch basketball were regretting their decisions (probably on their timing).  Some people enjoy watching reruns of games; I’m not one of them.  I know who won the National Championship in 2010 (Duke).  I don’t really enjoy watching baseball or golf on TV, but to watch reruns of games and matches seems like an Ambien prescription to me. 

I’m catching up on my reading.  Yesterday I read an entire book at one sitting.  It was “Cat in the Hat.”  Just practicing for my time with my yet-to arrive grandchild.  I’m reading the newspaper more slowly.  Believe it or not, there are still classified ads.     

Lust has become a problem for me.  I’m lusting after used tractors with front-end loaders.  Night after night I look at the Facebook marketplace to see what’s available.  You never know when it might be handy to have one.  So far, only one person has met my price: $25.  Turns out he was offering a John Deere scale model toy. 

I’ve been seized with the urge to ramble.  I now understand the idea of a Sunday drive.  The other day I loaded up the dogs and drove nowhere.  They enjoyed letting their ears flap and I needed to see something beside the four walls of the house. 

Watching the news is important to me now.  I’d forgotten we had local news on TV.  I find myself hoping for a report that the case numbers and deaths are going down.  The good thing about the local news is there is no playful banter among the news staff; they’re all in separate rooms or at home. 

I’m spending more time in intentional prayer.  I pray more deeply for people I love and for people I know.  I’m hearing God speak to places in my soul I wish he would leave alone.  Quarantine has arrested the business of life and opened up space in my heart.  “Be still and know that I am God” is easier, now that meetings are suspended. 

Most of all, quarantine is teaching me to cope with hope.  Quarantine will end.  The threat of COVID-19 will pass.  We’ll eat out again.  Meetings will resume.  Kids will go back to school.  We will all find a new normal. 

Followers of Jesus are people of hope.  We wait for our quarantine on earth to end, wait for the day when the sin virus no longer contaminates our world and our souls.  But our hope is not in a change of circumstance.  Our hope is in a person, a Savior.   

To hope in Jesus means you know that no matter what is happening in you or around you, he has promised you something better.  That hope he sealed with his death on the cross and guaranteed with his resurrection.  Put your life in his hands and his promise is your hope.