Many of us grew up with the adage “Patience is a virtue” ringing in our ears. Or maybe “Good things come to him who waits”
In James 5: 7 – 10 the writer talks abut patience.
7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming.
James 5:7
Having given this piece of advice James then goes on to compare the patience of waiting on the Lord to the patience of a farmer.
“See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains.”
Generally I don’t give much thought to patience. Patience isn’t something I have to be concerned about – unless of course I’m stuck behind a cautious driver at a junction and I find myself saying “Go on! You could have gone then!” And then a voice from the passenger seat says to me “Be patient.”
Patience is a virtue. In other words to be patient, to have patience, is a good thing. So why is that? Why is it good to be patient?
I suppose in certain fields of work or aspects of life, patience is a virtue. For example someone who is engaged in creating a piece of art has to be patient. Or perhaps someone repairing a watch. Or an airline pilot bringing in a plane to land. These all require patience.
But of course it is not just in the world of work that patience is required. To play the piano to the level required to play a complex piece of music by Bach for example requires patience – patience to practise and practise. To play golf to a decent standard requires practice and patience too. And I suppose all of us can understand that kind of patience – the practice makes perfect kind.
We can see then how patience can be a virtue in certain jobs and in certain pastimes. But can patience be a virtue in other senses too?
Patience can be a virtue in situations where waiting is required and where essentially we have no control over a situation or where we are powerless to change things. So to go back to my illustration earlier. If I’m stuck in traffic, to have patience is a virtue because I cannot do anything about the cars in front of me. Similarly when queuing at an airport to check in or to go through security it is pointless getting agitated because it is so slow a process. In such circumstances we cannot do anything to change anything so we may as well be patient.
And although James of course could not have been thinking about traffic jams or queues at airports, I think it is to these second scenarios that he is thinking. Situations where we have no influence or control so we may as well be patient.
Try as we may there are some things in our lives that we cannot exert any control over.
It’s hard for any of us at any age to be patient. Particularly when we are in a time of stress.
There was a delightful little story in the Reader’s Digest from Mrs. Nolen Cash of Lonoke, Arkansas. Mrs. Cash said that with the due date approaching for the birth of their first child, her husband was becoming increasingly fidgety.
One evening she told her husband that she was having some slight pains, but she assured him that they were not serious. Later, she was relaxing in front of the TV when she heard her fidgety husband shaving. Then he began to throw on his clothes.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
With great exasperation he said, “You can sit here if you want to, but I’m going to the hospital!”
Sometimes these are trivial but sometimes they are serious. We can either get angry and frustrated and feel our blood pressure rising or we can be patient and accept that we cannot do anything.
In summary, waiting can be aggravating. But we may as well accept that there is nothing we can do apart from wait patiently.
To illustrate his thinking about the scenarios where we have no influence and where we cannot change time, James uses the illustration of the farmer. At the time James was writing, farmers in Palestine relied entirely on natural irrigation and rainfall. In contrast as I understand it, nowadays Israel is very green due to the widespread use of irrigation systems. But then whether or not a crop grew depended almost entirely on how much moisture fell, and in what form and at what time.
There had to be rain when the crop was planted in order to help germination and then rain later to nourish it. But if rain came just before the harvest or during the harvest the crop could be ruined.
Since there was nothing the farmer could do to influence these climatic events the farmer just had to be patient.
James is writing to a group of early Christians who believed that Jesus’s return was imminent. They were becoming impatient for this event. So this is why James is preaching patience. This is why James is saying to them that there is nothing they can do to change the timescales so they may as well wait patiently.
I suppose for us it is slightly different. Although we hear during Advent that Jesus will come again, after 2,000 years of waiting we’re patient. We’ve got used to waiting. Or maybe we’ve moved on from waiting patiently and think Jesus’ return will never happen. Either way we hear the promise he will come again and we wait. So we may as well wait patiently.
However, sometimes we have to be impatient. Sometimes to be patient can be an excuse to do nothing or to sit back.
During my visit to America in the summer I learned a great deal about the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s. And one thing that became clear to me was that the protests were sparked in large part by black people, and those who were sympathetic to their plight, running out of patience. For years they had been promised reforms but it had never happened. Finally their patience ran out and many of them decided to do something about it via civil disobedience.
In his great “I have a dream speech” Dr Martin Luther King said:
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
Patience in the face of unjust circumstances that can be changed is not a virtue. Justice delayed is justice denied.
Being patient with injustice, hoping in other words that things will eventually change but not seeking to bring about that change, such patience is wrong. It is unvirtuous.
So yes James is right that in some things, which we cannot influence, we have to be patient:
7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming.
8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.
But we should not be patient when we see wrongs happening now. We should not be patient with the fact that, according to Shelter, this Christmas 80,000 children in this country will be homeless. We should not be patient with MPs who could receive an 11% pay rise.
Be patient in waiting for God’s Kingdom to come and our Saviour to return in glory. But be impatient with the in justice of this world until he comes.
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