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<\/a><\/p>\n2 Peter 3:8-15a<\/p>\n
Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.<\/p>\n
Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.<\/p>\n
Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.<\/p>\n
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I can\u2019t remember where I heard the expression, \u201cPatience isn\u2019t my long suit.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s been around for a long time.\u00a0 Merriam Webster suggests that the phrase goes back to at least 1742 and derived from card-playing.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n But the phrase expresses a much older sentiment than that.\u00a0 In fact, it\u2019s pretty much a universal feature of human life.\u00a0 I can\u2019t recall or even imagine anyone ever saying, \u201cPatience is<\/em> my long suit.\u201d \u00a0By and large, we are \u2013 as a race \u2013 im<\/em>patient and \u2013 as the speed at which our society moves continues to accelerate \u2013 we are becoming even more impatient.<\/p>\n To be honest, if we celebrate patience at all, we celebrate it in retrospect, and we celebrate it because there is an implied benefit to it that we see \u2013 mostly \u2013 in retrospect.\u00a0 Self-help books are full of those<\/em> stories.\u00a0 Writing about his career on in the NBA, Michael Jordan, for example, tells about his career as a basketball player.\u00a0 Jordan writes, \u201cI\u2019ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I\u2019ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I\u2019ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I\u2019ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n All that\u2019s fair enough in one way. \u00a0\u201cSlow and steady wins the race.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cDiscipline pays off.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cRome wasn\u2019t built in a day.\u201d\u00a0 As quickly as we wish life would move, some things cannot be accomplished overnight.\u00a0 Discipline and focus are important.<\/p>\n But Peter isn\u2019t talking about this kind of patience.\u00a0 The patience he encourages his readers to embrace and the patience that he describes God as having are something very different. Translated into English, using the word \u201cforebearance,\u201d the kind of patience Peter has in mind implies endurance and control practiced for the sake of others.\u00a0 The kind of patience that provides space for healing, growth, and restoration.<\/p>\n Practiced by God, it is the kind of patience that holds out the hope that there will be time for those who are lost and struggle, who are trapped and embattled, for those who are wounded and bleeding.\u00a0 It is the kind of patience that even holds out hope for those who willfully reject the love of God and have yet to recognize their need for God.\u00a0 People who are angry, alienated, certain that they don\u2019t need God, even people who are convinced that there is no God.<\/p>\n Practiced by people of faith, it is the kind of patience that comes alongside God\u2019s patient care and bears the struggles associated with that companionship.\u00a0 Christians, Peter is saying, are those who are already at home in God.\u00a0 They know that is where they are kept safe.\u00a0 It is there that their lives are centered.<\/p>\n So, in the name of extending that healing and saving grace to others, they, too, practice forebearance or patience \u2013 not<\/em> \u00a0for their own sake \u2013 not<\/em> \u00a0in the name of achieving a long-term, personal goal \u2013 but in the name of ensuring that others<\/em> find the same forgiveness, love and mercy that they themselves have received.\u00a0 This kind of patience is other-directed, sacrificial, and tempered by goals that are not worn thin by frustration with life as we experience it but are shaped by the realization that God\u2019s purposes are the only ones that finally matter.\u00a0 Shocking though it may be to modern sensibilities, this is why Peter emphasizes that God lives beyond time, acts with greater speed than we might think, and will finally establish a new heaven and earth where righteousness reigns unchallenged.<\/p>\n So, what does \u201cpatience for the sake of others\u201d look like?\u00a0 Let\u2019s be practical:<\/p>\n One, it is patience that has a capacity for growth and struggle.<\/em><\/p>\n Anyone who has ever been a parent \u2013 or anyone who has paid any attention to their own struggles \u2013 knows how important a capacity for growth and struggle can be for us at any stage of life.\u00a0 Growth and maturity are not achieved over night.\u00a0 Growing into the people that God intends us to be is not something that can be done without listening, struggling, and making mistakes along the way.<\/p>\n The \u00a0paths to which we are called and the lives we are called to live are not \u201cwritten in stone.\u201d\u00a0 We live into them over time and living into them involves exploration and discovery.<\/p>\n Patience for the sake of others understands this, and it has a capacity for the growth and struggle that is involved.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t judge people for having those struggles.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t deprive people of the time that it takes for them to find their way.\u00a0 It offers help when and where it is needed.\u00a0 It stands by when there is nothing to be done, but to remind someone that they are loved.<\/p>\n It also knows that failing to allow people to struggle appropriately can be bad for our children and for others.\u00a0 In fact, sometimes intervening can be im<\/em>patience.\u00a0 The helicopter parent who intervenes in a child\u2019s acquisition of the skills and temperament that make for a healthy adult life often short-circuits maturation and encourages dependence and it can even rob a child of a sense of moral responsibility.<\/p>\n Teaching undergraduates years ago, I flunked a student for plagiarizing a research paper.\u00a0 Days later his father was at my office door, demanding to know how I could be sure that his son had copied his paper from other sources.\u00a0 My response was to note that his son had an amazing command of Victorian English and that most of those people were dead.\u00a0 Even that and the stack of books that he had used did not deter his father from objecting to the grade that I gave his son.\u00a0 But the loser was his son and his grade had nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n Two, patience for the sake of others does not discriminate.<\/em><\/p>\n Many of our friendships are tailored to our needs.\u00a0 They are based upon common pursuits and interests and we lapse into them without thinking about it.\u00a0 Even in the typical church, people this is often the case.\u00a0 Established friends gather together for conversation and gravitate to work that they share.<\/p>\n There is nothing wrong with this, perse, <\/em>but patience for the sake of others is centered on the needs of people that are not part of our established friendships or on the value that others have in our own lives.\u00a0 It looks for people who are unloved and might even be described as unlovable.\u00a0 It is available to those who have been sidelined by life\u2019s circumstances.\u00a0 It embraces people who may not have the energy or ability to respond in kind.<\/p>\n It has heard the words of Jesus, \u2013 \u201cEven as you cared for the least of these, you have cared for me.\u201d\u00a0 Patience of this kind understands that the worth of each person is not rooted in society\u2019s estimate of his or her value, but in their status as the children of God.\u00a0 And it never tires of reminding people on the fringe of things that God loves them.<\/p>\n That kind of patience cares for older members of Christ\u2019s body who may be isolated and alone.\u00a0 It adopts children who have been denied a parent\u2019s love and it reaches out to those who are without hope.<\/p>\n Three, patience for the sake of others can\u2019t be \u201cphoned in\u201d or \u201cfarmed out\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n The kind of patience that God expects of us cannot be done at arm\u2019s length with a checkbook or dispatched by voting for political measures that will do the work for us.\u00a0 Yes, it is important to give.\u00a0 Yes, it is important to vote.\u00a0 But neither giving, nor voting is a substitute for making ourselves available to others.<\/p>\n Far too much of life in the church today is predicated upon the assumption that churches ought to meet our needs and \u2013 if they don\u2019t \u2013 that we ought to look for another one. Frankly, church is not about you.\u00a0 It is not about me. \u00a0It is about God\u2019s call on our <\/em>\u00a0lives and the imperative to offer the gift of patient space for healing and grace to others.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Finally, patience for the sake of others is convinced that our relationship with God is ultimately the one and only certain source of healing and freedom.<\/em><\/p>\n It is easy to be unhappy and uneasy in trying times.\u00a0 When things are difficult Christians are bound to wonder why doesn\u2019t God bring this all to a conclusion?\u00a0 Most of us feel that way from time to time.\u00a0 And the false prophets that taunted the church to which Peter wrote asked the same question.\u00a0 Obviously, they suggested, you have this whole thing wrong.\u00a0 Jesus isn\u2019t coming again.\u00a0 If he were, why are you still struggling?<\/p>\n But Peter rightly notes that God\u2019s patience is the occasion for us to display divine patience in our lives \u2013 patience not for our own sake \u2013 but for the sake of others.\u00a0 What one of us does not have a friend or a relative that has yet to absorb the fact that God loves them?\u00a0 Which one of us is without friends, children or family members who still longing to find forgiveness and healing?\u00a0 Patience for the sake of others grasps the fact that only God can offer those things and it endures its own struggles in the hope that they, too, will discover that truth.<\/p>\n We are, in other words, people who do<\/em> believe that Christ will come again and that the moments between our profession of faith and Christ\u2019s second coming are moments thread through with the possibility of healing and renewal.\u00a0 This is why every Sunday we declare, \u201cChrist has died.\u00a0 Christ is risen.\u00a0 Christ will come again.\u201d<\/p>\n S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard captures \u201cpatience for the sake\u201d in the form of a prayer:<\/p>\n Lord Jesus Christ, there is so much to draw us back<\/em>: empty achievements, meaningless pleasures, unworthy concerns. There is so much to scare us back<\/em>: a pride that is too cowardly to let itself be helped, a cowardly timidity that shirks to its own ruin, an anxiety of sin that shuns the purity of holiness as illness shuns the remedy. But you are still the strongest\u2013so draw us, and even more strongly, to yourself. We call you our Savior and Redeemer, and you came to earth in order to free us from the chains in which we were bound or in which we had bound ourselves and in order to rescue the redeemed. This was your task, which you have completed and which you will complete until the end of time, for just as you yourself have said it, so will you do it: lifted up from the earth, you will draw all to yourself.[ii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [i]<\/a> http:\/\/jcsteelauthor.com\/books\/etymology-excavation-strong-suit\/#:~:text=\u2019Strong%20suit\u2019%20is%20a%20phrase,something%20you%20are%20good%20at.&text=To%20be%20more%20exact%2C%20most,from%20the%20game%20of%20bridge<\/a>.<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity\u00a0<\/em>(1848).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Photo by Stefan Kunze<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2 Peter 3:8-15a Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[3314,3317],"class_list":["post-3253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advent","tag-patience","tag-waiting"],"yoast_head":"\n