When Patience and Time Win
(Posted March 29, 2025)
If there’s one thing that we 21st century people are really lacking in our day-to-day life, it’s patience. And who could blame us? In a world where everything is “I want it, and I want it RIGHT NOW,” the pressure is on us all to perform. After all, if we’re under stress, why shouldn’t we pass the virus of impatience on to everybody else?
Jesus Preached Patience
The truth is, when we sign on to be followers of Jesus, we accept the “training wheels” for patience. After all, if ever there was a perfect model of patience, it’s Jesus.
- He waited for us to catch up with him in finding the strength to peel away the old sinful crust on our souls.
- He even tells a somewhat obtuse parable about a fig tree that’s not producing any leaves, much less fruit.
- Sometimes when Jesus picks a topic for one of his “thin place” stories that we call parables, we have to work a little to find the point.
Now most of us in this neck of the woods don’t know much about fig trees, unless we might have an Italian grandparent or two. But they require care and pruning and a lot of work before someone sees results.
Jesus Preached Action
The truth of this parable is, when Jesus promised his father that he could help change us woeful human beings into something better, it was a big gamble. Humanity has been sinning right and left ever since we left the Garden.
Jesus spent the first years of his ministry showing us how – if we were paying attention. Telling us stories of how to be better people. Telling us how to turn feeling sorry for what we’ve done wrong into the motive to be better and to lead others to be better people, too. And because it takes time, that process requires a boatload of patience.
Patience in Action
I am always reminded of Sue -- a member of the church I first pastored in the Berkshires. She was an elementary school teacher. In that school there was one teacher who, for reasons unknown to Sue, was as miserable and mean to Sue as she could be. If there was a way she could block the work she was doing, this detractor would, and with a evil kind of glee. But whenever Sue’s nemesis would foul things up for her, Sue would return it with a sort of calm demeanor, and some kind of kindness.
This dynamic went on for years. Then one day Sue’s detractor turned and asked her, “why are you so nice to me?” Sue just smiled and said, “because I see in you so much that is worth kindness.”
Things changed after that.
The two teachers began working together, and a friendship began to develop. Just a short time after that, Sue developed a life-threatening form of leukemia that ended her teaching career. But who was among her most dedicated friends who brought her food and kept visiting her? The teacher in whom kindness and caring was cultivated in their relationship.
When the fig tree failed to leaf out and bear fruit, Jesus didn’t take the axe to it. He told his father to give it another year of nurturing and caring. We are so lucky that Jesus tells his Father the same thing about us, too.
Be there Sunday when we explore the moments in our lives when patience and time won the day.