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Your answers might include things like parenting, standing in line, performing some detailed task, losing weight, or going through a hard time. Patience is the ability to wait, to continue doing something despite difficulties, to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed, to tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.
To illustrate the concept of patience, let me tell you two stories. Here is the first, a mom's story:
"Getting ready and out the door is a chore, as any mom of littles will tell you. No matter how much extra time you allot yourself, it's never enough. It seems those last 10 minutes before leaving are pure and utter chaos. It never fails. Somebody poops right as I step out the door. ... Oops, I forgot to water the dog. It's enough to drive someone mad—at least if that someone is me.
"I like to think I am a good mother. But I know for a fact I have one motherly flaw that protrudes like a plank from my eye: I lack patience. At no time is this flaw more evident than when my girls and I are trying to get out the door to go somewhere. The problem is, I'm an 'arrive on time' kind of girl. Or at least I used to be. Now, with two kids, I rarely reach my destination on time. But the drive to do so still pushes me to run over any obstacles in my path. Even if those obstacles are often my children. Today my 4-year-old, finally strapped down behind her five-point-harness, crying in the back seat, asked me, 'Why are you being so mean to us?' I was buzzing down the road, my eye on the prize of my destination, but in that moment my heart stopped, and I knew I was in the wrong. ... I decided right then and there that enough was enough. I don't want my children to remember their mother always in a hurry or always about to burst from frustration. I want them to remember examples of patience and love." [1]
I must admit that I, too, like to be on time and stick to a schedule. I have been unkind and impatient in the interest of timeliness, and I confess that it is never a pleasant sight. Patience appears in short supply in our fast-paced lives. We are always looking for ways to manage our schedules better, to make things more efficient, to cram more tasks into our already full days. But I believe time management is an elusive and sadly inadequate goal to be pursuing, mostly because it is based on pressure we feel from the culture around us and not on a desire to emulate the character of God.
Let's look at another story, this time in Nehemiah 9. Here the priests are giving instructions to people who are in the process of rebuilding their lives and their city. They have faced a lot of opposition and hardship, and though they have managed to erect an exterior wall, they have a long way to go to complete the project. The leaders call the people together to worship God and confess their sins, and then they tell them a story to put things in perspective. It is the history of God and his people.
The story begins with God making the earth and everything in it. God is not only the creator but the one who sustains all of creation. Things go a bit sideways when humanity decides to choose their own way instead of God's, but God responds with a way of salvation. God then makes a covenant with Abraham to make him a great nation through which all nations of the world will be blessed. The family of Abraham multiples over generations and rivalries and betrayal enter the story. The growing nation ends up in slavery in Egypt, but God sees their misery and rescues them. God leads the homeless nation through the wilderness, assuring them of his constant presence and care with a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night, and miraculous provision of food and water. And how do the people respond?
"But our ancestors resisted following You. They were arrogant. They were proud.
They refused to obey Your commands, plugging their ears. Knowing what You had done for them in the past, they willfully forgot it in the present. Stubborn. Rebellious.
Instead of following You, they appointed their own leader to take them back to the land of their oppression—to Egypt!
But You are not like us, God.
You are filled with love, compassion, and forgiveness.
You endure much with your anger [are slow to anger] and display Your loyal love." (Nehemiah 9:16-18, The Voice)
To add insult to injury, the rescued nation attributes their miraculous escape from slavery to a golden calf instead of to God. And then they decide that freedom isn't all they had envisioned and they want to go back to their captors. The story goes on to mention the people's horrible atrocities, actions in stark contrast to God's incomprehensible compassion. Despite their terrible behavior, God never abandons them, he never removes the cloud or the pillar of fire, he never stops giving them food or water, and he makes sure their clothes and shoes do not wear out. After forty years, God leads the people into a new land, fertile and productive. And the people react like ungrateful children, refusing to listen, killing the messengers God sends to warn them. So God lets them experience the consequences of their actions and they encounter suffering. In their pain, they cry out to God for help. God listens, and God rescues them. Again.
"Somehow your mercy is inexhaustible...
Over and over and over You intervened and saved Your people...
Year after year, Your patience endured...
It was because of Your great mercy that they were not completely annihilated or forsaken.
You are a grace-filled and mercy-laden God;
Our True God - You who are great, majestic, and awesome, You who always keep your covenant of loyal love... (Nehemiah 9:28-32, The Voice)
The story that the priests tell the people rebuilding the city of Jerusalem highlights the patience and faithfulness of God. No matter how much trouble their ancestors caused, God never abandoned them. He demonstrated his patience and compassion over and over again. This story was meant to encourage the people in the long and difficult task of rebuilding their lives. God's patience was to become the backbone of their patience.
Our modern world seems to value efficiency over patience and longsuffering, but efficiency is not a fruit of the spirit of God. If there is anything that the history of God and his people demonstrates, it is his indefatigable patience. Might I suggest that we are often impatient with others because we don't realize how patient God is with us. We can be so focused on the chaos in front of us that we don't realize that we are the chaos God has to deal with. And in our arrogance, we dare to accuse God of being slow, of not acting, of not caring, of not listening. God is not ignoring us, he is being patient, but this is a difficult concept for impatient people to grasp. We must resist projecting our experience onto God, and instead, allow God's spirit to inform and transform our experience.
"Don’t imagine, dear friends, that God’s timetable is the same as ours; as the psalm says, for with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day. Now the Lord is not slow about enacting His promise—slow is how some people want to characterize it—no, He is not slow but patient and merciful to you, not wanting anyone to be destroyed, but wanting everyone to turn away from following his own path and to turn toward God’s." (2 Peter 3:8-9, The Voice)
"Do you take the kindness of God for granted? Do you see His patience and tolerance as signs that He is a pushover when it comes to sin? How could you not know that His kindness is guiding our hearts to turn away from distractions and habitual sin to walk a new path?" (Romans 2:4, The Voice)
Let's take a brief look at the words for patience in the scriptures. There is no one word in Hebrew to describe patience. Qavah means to wait, to expect, to bind together (hints of covenant). Khool means to hope for and comes from a root which means "to calve" (hints of the patience and suffering required in giving birth). Erekh ruach means long of spirit and is translated "patience" in the story of Job. In Greek, hupomeno means to remain, to abide, to persevere under misfortunes, to endure, to bear bravely, to hold fast to one's faith. Another Greek work, makrothymia, combines the word long with the word anger, and here we get the idea of being slow to anger, or longsuffering, having forbearance, steadfastness, and staying power.
The idea of "fullness of time"[2] can be explained by thinking about pregnancy (remember khool coming from the root "to calve"). One mother told me that her pregnancy seemed to last forever. But ask that same mother if she would have preferred delivering a premature baby and she would say absolutely not. We want a baby to be fully developed and strong before it enters a harsh world. And that means we don't rush things. We have patience, because a life is at stake.
Let me offer a few final thoughts on patience:
1. Patience is demonstrated to us by a loving, loyal, longsuffering God; we are the benefactors of God's patience every day. Let us never forget this when we are tempted to be impatient with others.
2. God's patient character is meant to be reflected in us, his children.
3. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit (it takes time to grow).
4. Patience is also something we practice. We have to nurture the seed that God has planted in us.
5. Patience places love and mercy front and centre, not efficiency, not performance, not perfection.
6. Patience is not the same as slowness; patience is discerning God's way and timing and working in sync with them.
7. Patience means embracing God's concept of fullness of time. This means we avoid doing things prematurely, we try not to put things together hastily, but give adequate time for the necessary growth, strengthening, stabilizing, and bonding (remember qavah and its hints of covenant). Fullness of time is the time it takes for fullness to develop. For you coffee drinkers, perhaps it helps to think of instant coffee versus freshly roasted coffee beans, ground and brewed as you wait. For those with a sweet tooth, compare eating a cake pulled out of the oven before it is quite done to waiting till it attains the perfect spongy lightness.
Next time you find yourself being impatient, you might want to think about fine coffee and yummy cake. And the inexhaustible mercy and longsuffering of our loving God.
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[1] From a blog by Kelcie Huffstickler. You can read the whole story here.
[2] "With immense pleasure, He laid out His intentions through Jesus, a plan that will climax when the time is right (fullness of time) as He returns to create order and unity—both in heaven and on earth—when all things are brought together under the Anointed’s royal rule." (Ephesians 1:9-10, The Voice)
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