waiting is sooo difficult…

there are many things in life that test our patience:  expressways, supermarket lines, doctor’s offices, irritating people.  we hate to wait.  we do not like to wait. 

have you noticed that the more expensive the restaurant 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 have been looking for a while here at the book of james in the nt and he has something to say on “patience.”  you and i need patience in every area of our life.

one question we could ask james is when should i be patient?  and that is a good question.  now james doesn’t say we have to be patient all the time but there are special times when you need that extra dose of patience and one of them is when circumstances are uncontrollable

have you figured out that a lot of life is beyond your control?  you cannot keep your thumb on everything.  james uses a farmer as an example of when circumstances are uncontrollable. 

james 5.7 (msg),  friends, 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. be patient like that…

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.  as a farmer you deal with a lot of uncontrollable factors – circumstances – in life. 

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 uncontrollable circumstances.

just a thought from the front porch…