Patience

The best way to see if you are a patient person is to go to Disneyland. This past Friday Jen and our two kids braved the crowds at Disneyland. Thankfully we know Eeyore so we got free tickets, seriously. After standing in line after line I'm convinced there are at least two kinds of patience; active patience and inactive patience. Active patience is when you don't mind the wait. Often this happens when you meet someone next to you and you start having a conversation, the wait seems to go by more quickly and you enjoy yourself. Inactive patience is when you are just standing in an endless line of strangers and you can feel yourself getting older.

The readings from the lectionary this week focus on patience and waiting. John the Baptists asks Jesus  "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" John the Baptist was the cousin of Jesus and had the job of preparing the way for Jesus. However due to John's preaching he finds himself in prison and he is forced to wonder and even doubt if Jesus is the one the Scriptures promised who would come and make things right, the Messiah. Jesus responds by saying, "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them." In other words Jesus says, "Yes, I'm the one, things are beginning to be fixed and restored."

Here is where patience comes in. Picture yourself in John's position, you believe that Jesus is going to come and make things right, but you find yourself locked up in a prison cell. Jesus tells you all the good news about how people are being restored and lives are being turned around, but your own future looks hopeless. At this point we are challenged to see things from a different perspective. We often view things as if we, or our families, were the center of the world. It is important to be able to look and see what God is doing, even if our own lives are difficult at the moment God is still working and bringing new life through the Spirit.

As Christians we are called to be patient as we live in the time between Jesus' death and resurrection and the future time when God will restore and renew all things. In theology this is referred to as already/not yet, because God has begun to renew and restore but the complete renewal is still to come. So as we wait for this to happen we are also called to action and participation. This is active patience and it involves living in the moment in light of God's future. For example, Jesus teaches us to love our enemies and be merciful even though this is not our natural way of responding. As Christians we are to point to different way to live, we won't always get it right but we are to participate in what God is doing in the world.

Ryan