Psalm 119:123 – Patience

My eyes have failed looking for your salvation,
and for your righteous word.

Any number of people have told me that I shouldn’t pray for patience. If I do, God will doubtless send me all kinds of trials and keep me waiting so as to teach me patience by experience.

I think it doesn’t matter if you pray for patience or not. You’re going to get an opportunity to learn patience by experience.

The psalmist is living, well, life! I think we can all relate. From childhood trips when we doubtless drove our parents nuts by asking “are we there yet?” to expectations of other people, to our hopes even in old age for new blessings to come–and even to looking for the end of long sentences–we have opportunities to practice patience.

Usually we don’t. If you keep wondering why your patience is being tested so much, you might consider whether you are actually gaining patience or just repeating our experience of extended impatience.

But one of the experiences of Christian life, and yes, the lives of people of other faiths, is that things we hope for, whether they are secular in nature or the result of a perceived promise by God is delay.

One of the big ones for Christians is the wait for the second coming of Jesus. How are we doing with that?

Well, I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist. Back in 1844 (well, first in 1843), Adventists calculated that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844. The history books, not to mention we’re still hanging out on this planet, suggest that prediction wasn’t right.

I don’t bring up SDAs in order to laugh at them, but rather to point out just how normal is this is. People continuously set dates for the second coming. Many more don’t set dates, but come up with various reasons to declare that the second coming is “really near” now. We’re obviously in the last days, because [list of things we don’t like about the world here].

In growing up I remember evangelists coming by regularly, and in order to provide the appearance of an audience when really very few visitors showed up, we’d all attend. After a time I started to notice a problem. At one point I remember wondering why Russia (the USSR back then) wasn’t part of the prophecies of the end, considering how much the older folks talked about it. A couple of years later, Russia suddenly appeared in one of these evangelistic meetings as a really-truly sign that the end was really near.

Our eyes just get worn out reading all the explanations of why the end hasn’t come yet and why we ought to keep hoping for it.

There’s a good side to staying on the watch for God’s promises. I think that’s what the psalmist is pointing out. No matter what has happened, no matter how long he has had to look, he has kept hoping. That is a good thing.

Trying to make up the result you want–not so much. Perhaps we would be better to “evangelize” about the good news that Jesus loves you now and invites you into his family, rather than trying to pin down the time when he appears in the clouds. Making new predictions can just be wearing on our eyes and our hopes.

And as someone pointed out to me today, the one thing we can’t do is give up. Ultimately that is what patience is about. We practice patience when we keep moving forward and don’t give up.

What opportunities will you have to practice patience today? Will you take advantage of them, or will you just demonstrate your skill at impatience?