I don't know about you, but I do not like to wait. I do not
like cooling my heels in a doctor's office. I do not like being
put on hold and force-fed Muzak through my ear. I do not like
sitting at interminable red lights. And I particularly dislike
standing in lines at check-out counters (which means that this
time of year is especially aggravating) especially when the other
line ALWAYS moves faster. I do not like to wait. Lord, give me
patience, but HURRY!
Those of you who have been in the service know what I mean.
You remember the old slogan, "Hurry up and wait." There is the
story of a young soldier who, along with a number of others, was
about to get his discharge papers. As it came his turn, the
sergeant looked up from his desk. "Well, boy, I'm finally rid of
you. I never liked you; you never liked me. I'll bet you can't
wait till I die so you can come back and spit on my grave."
The boy replied, "Don't worry about that, Sarge, after today
I will never STAND IN LINE again." Dream on.
Some people constantly MAKE others wait. Just a week and a
half ago, the Bill Clinton's new Presidential Library was
officially opened in Little Rock. You probably saw snippets of
the dedication ceremony on the news. Former President Jimmy
Carter was among those who spoke. He said,
I am...here to express my admiration for the great
leader whose name it bears and whose records it holds.
There is a special tie that binds those of us together
who have lived and served in the White House and then
moved on to other things, retired either as required by
the Constitution or involuntarily as a result of
elections. My life has been closely intertwined with
Bill Clinton's. The first time I met Bill was exactly
30 years ago when I was governor and charged with
helping Democratic candidates throughout the nation. I
came to meet an unknown Congressional candidate in
Little Rock, in a Little Rock hotel. It may be a
surprise to some of you to learn that he was late for
the appointment.(1)
Everyone laughed. Bill Clinton is NOTORIOUS for keeping
people waiting. "Clinton time" is how he reads a clock.
An editorial in Time magazine a ways back called waiting a
form of imprisonment - "one is doing time - but why? One is
being punished not for an offense of one's own but often for the
inefficiencies of those who impose the wait...Aside from boredom
and physical discomfort, the subtler misery of waiting is the
knowledge that one's most precious resource, time, a fraction of
one's life, is being stolen away, irrecoverably lost."(2)
Waiting is particularly tough on children. How many times
have we heard our kids whine from the back seat, "Daddy, when
will we be there?" This time of year the query is, "How many
days till Christmas?" Perhaps those questions are good
preparation for the waiting that unavoidably lies ahead.
Waiting is a way of life. There is no way any of us could
ever be rich enough or powerful enough to control time to such an
extent that we never ever have to wait.
In terms of our faith, there are sometimes terribly long
waits for God. We pray for deliverance from some disastrous
illness or family situation for ourselves or some loved one, but
that deliverance seems to take forever to arrive. We wait. We
pray for food for starving Africans one year, donate money and
technology to help wipe that famine out, then a couple of years
later, see those same people starving again. We wonder why...and
we wait. We pray for peace and justice in the world, try to do
our part, but then look around to see that nothing much has
changed. We wait some more. One could get very discouraged with
a God who makes us wait so much.
Of course, that problem goes back a long way. Centuries ago
the Psalmist cried out, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me
forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long
must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day
long?"(3) Waiting was just as tough for the ancients as it is for
us.
But then the words of Galatians jump out at us: "when the
time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born
under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the
full rights of sons." WHEN THE TIME HAD FULLY COME. WHAT time?
GOD'S time. Granted, we would prefer that God work according to
OUR schedule, but that rarely seems to happen.
Why? Is God just inconsiderate like some celestial Bill
Clinton? Or perhaps God is terribly inefficient like the
temporary clerks hired for Christmas by department stores. Maybe
God is just mean!
No, we would not want to say any of those things. We do not
believe them. We believe in a God who loves us so much that we
have been invited to be a part of the divine family, to be
adopted as children, as Paul says. And to that end, God sent
Jesus...WHEN THE TIME HAD FULLY COME. Perhaps God expects us to
develop that virtue called patience.
A minister's wife asked the young girls in her Sunday School
class to define patience. One of them raised her hand and said,
"Patience is when you are sitting in church and the preacher is
preaching. You're just sitting there and he is preaching. He
keeps preaching and you keep sitting there. That's patience."
Well, perhaps.
According to Mr. Webster, patience can be defined in two
ways. First, it is "the power to WAIT for a hoped-for good."
Waiting again. That hoped-for good might take any number of
forms. It could be the power to wait for Christmas to come, or
for the plane that is bringing the love of your life in for the
holidays, or any number of good things.
The second thing Mr. Webster says about patience is that it
is "the power to suffer and to endure." That is the kind of
patience we think of whenever old Job comes to mind. Here was a
man who suffered and endured FAR beyond anything most of the rest
of us will ever experience - the death of his children, the loss
of his property, the ruin of his health, and on top of that, the
snide barbs of his closest friends. Even his wife advised him to
"curse God and die." But Job hung in there. He was willing to
wait. In the midst of all his pain and trouble he was able to
say, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name
of the Lord." He even said, "Shall I receive good at the hand of
God and not evil?" He affirmed that everything did not have to
come to him "right side up," that he could trust God not only in
prosperity but in adversity as well. That is why we talk about
Job as the paradigm of patience. He had "the power to suffer and
endure."
But the question arises, "Why bother?" What is such a big
deal about waiting for a hoped-for good? What is so special
about any power to suffer and endure? Is there any real value in
it? Most people think so. Shakespeare wrote in Othello, "How
poor are they that have no patience." Kafka wrote, "The greatest
sin is IMpatience." The Apostle Paul even called it one of the
lovely products of that garden of a Christ-filled life: "The
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience..." There MUST
be value there.
Truth is that patience is essential to success in virtually
every area of life. Think how patient a man like Columbus had to
be to search for a new route to the East. Think how patient
Thomas Edison had to be to have 50,000 experiments fail before he
finally developed the storage battery. Think how patient a man
like Robert Frost was who wrote poetry for more than 20 years
before ever selling a volume of his work. Think how much
patience it takes to properly raise a child. Patience is one of
the keys to success. "Good things come to those who WAIT," and
all that.
All right, if patience is such a virtue, how do we go about
acquiring it. First of all, we must to WANT it. Patience is a
child of the desire. Some folks do not want it. I recall an old
Charlie Brown comic strip that has Lucy on her knees in prayer
asking for more patience and understanding, then jumping up
abruptly, dashing into the kitchen for a glass of milk and
explaining that she quit so quickly because she was afraid she
might get what she prayed for. Lucy equated patience with being
a doormat. Scripture would not agree with that. After all, the
writers of the Bible looked upon the achieving of patience as
something greatly worthwhile. The author of Hebrews tells us to
"run with PATIENCE the race that is set before us."(4) Paul
instructs us not to "grow weary in doing what is right, for we
will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up."(5) We have
already said that the Bible teaches that patience is one of the
fruits of a Spirit-filled life. If we would cultivate patience,
we first must WANT it.
Patience is also a child of prayer (although not Lucy's kind
of prayer). If we would really be patient, we will spend time in
sharing our anxieties, our frustration about having to wait, with
the Lord. It does not have to involve a lot of time. It might
be minutes rather than hours; it might consist of odd moments
throughout the day. But those brief moments can tell us not to
worry, that everything really IS on course whether it might be
obvious or not. As the hymnwriter has it:
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.(6)
But, most importantly, patience is a child of faith. If we
would develop patience, we will remember in whom we ultimately
trust. For old Job, of course, faith was the KEY to his
legendary patience. What finally got Job through all his
troubles was the confidence he had in his Lord. Do you remember
what he said? "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." Now
that is faith.
Isaiah understood that. That is why he could urge patience
to a nation in captivity in Babylon. That is why he could say
"Those who WAIT for the Lord shall renew their strength; they
shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not
grow weary; they shall walk and not faint."(7) The Psalmist
understood it. In the face of the assaults of enemies from all
sides, he could write, "WAIT for the Lord; be strong and let your
heart take courage; WAIT for the Lord."(8)
Not so in haste, my heart;
Have faith in God and wait;
Although He linger long,
He never comes too late.(9)
Yes, waiting is a part of the human experience. It is a
part of the Christian experience. It is a part of what we feel
during the season of Advent...COME ON, CHRISTMAS! Despite what
we might wish, God has never been some sort of heavenly butler
ready to respond to our every wish. To be sure God DOES
respond..."when the time had fully come." But we are forced to
note that the response often comes in ways that we do not expect.
For generations, the people of faith had prayed for the promised
Messiah - God sent a baby. They had prayed for someone who could
overwhelm their enemies - God sent them to a manger. They had
prayed for a conquering hero riding on a white horse and wearing
a golden crown - God sent someone on a donkey who would wear a
crown of thorns.
Was it worth the wait? Some did not think so and thus
rejected the claims of Christ. But millions of others HAVE
thought so, and we have cast our lot with the God who
occasionally has us wait, because we know that one day, the time
will fully come, the questions will be answered, the waiting will
be over, and we shall see Jesus face to face.
Amen!
1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60350-2004Nov18.html
2. Lance Morrow, "Waiting as a Way of Life," Time, July 23, 1984, p. 65
3. Psalm 13:1-2a
4. Hebrews 12:1
5. Galatians 6:9
6. Charles C. Converse, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus"
7. Isaiah 40:31
8. Psalm 27:14
9. Walter B. Knight, Knight's Master Book of New Illustrations, (Eerdmans Publishing,
Grand Rapids, 1956), p. 458
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