the honking horn...

now let's get back to james, and we see that he is headed in another direction. in james 5.7 he says (ms), meanwhile, friends, wait patiently... and patience is something that everyone of us needs.

here where we now live those who don't have patience tell everyone around them. the clarion call of the impatient is the honking horn. ''i've got to go, get moving, get out of my way.''

have you noticed that the more expensive the restaurant you go to the longer you wait? there are actually five different waits when you go to a restaurant. you wait to get a seat, then you wait to get the menu, then you wait to order, then you wait to get the food back, then you wait for the bill. and they have the audacity to call that guy the waiter!

we don't like to wait. so we need to learn to be patient. now james isn't saying that we need to be patient all the time but he does show us that there are special times that we should be patient. and one of them is in situations you can't control. and james 5.7(ms) gives a great example of this, ...wait patiently for the MASTER's arrival. you see farmers do this all the time, waiting for their valuable crops to mature, patiently letting the rain do its slow but sure work.

don't go into farming unless you've got patience. part of the job description of being a farmer is you do a lot of waiting: waiting to till, waiting to plant, waiting to harvest... there are a lot of factors in waiting. yet more than the factors of waiting on things to do are the factors that the farmer has no control over -- weather, rain, heat, the economy, labor practices...

if you have a lot of faith you can be a farmer but if you don't have a lot of faith don't be a farmer, because it takes patience. you deal with a lot of uncontrollable factors -- circumstances -- in life. even in palestine, where james is talking about, it wasn't the best of farming land, so they needed extra patience.

have you noticed that even when we realize a situation is beyond our control, we still try to control it? how do we do that? by worrying. we think that worry will control a situation. to worry about something you can change is dumb, to worry about something you can't change is useless. either way you shouldn't worry. we need to have patience in situations you can't control.

just some thoughts from the front porch...