Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: patience

  • Psalm 119:145 – Answer Me

    Psalm 119:145 – Answer Me

    I cried out with all my heart.
    Answer me, LORD!
    I will observe your statutes.

    If you have spent any time in prayer, you have likely spent time wondering if an answer was coming, and if it was coming, when would that be.

    This is not just our experience in prayer, but our experience in almost any relationship. The time between a request and response seems very long.

    I suspect this is inevitable. Everything takes time, but we like to see results immediately. Waiting in line is difficult for us. We wonder why the line doesn’t move faster, or why the store doesn’t take action to open more checkout stations.

    Near my home there is a railroad track that leads into a nearby chemical factory. Frequently we have trains going in and out of the plant, often adding more loaded cars over a period of time. As a result, one can wait quite a long time for these trains to get out of the way. Traffic can line up for a long ways down the road on either side.

    I am not so patient. I’ll frequently take a detour around the train, crossing the track some ways away. Sometimes this gets me to my destination faster, but frequently by the time I’ve completed my detour, I find that the traffic has dissipated, and I took longer getting around the delay than I would have taken just living through it.

    There’s this natural desire to make things happen if they aren’t happening. We’d like everything to work on our timetable. But when we’re waiting on God and going on our own detour it’s possible that, like I do with the train, we might miss what’s going on because we’re so busy working our way around. We are seeming to accomplish things when we’re just occupying time on detours.

    With the psalmist, we cry out with our whole heart. We ask for an answer. We promise God our obedience, our observance, our careful attention. But it’s easy to play busy, rather than to wait.

    There are times to be busy. We don’t want to miss those. But there are also times to watch and wait, to look to the Lord for the answer. Like Habakkuk (2:1), we need to climb up on the watchtower, stand guard, and wait to see what the Lord says.

    Can you manage to wait for God today?

  • Psalm 119:123 – Patience

    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?

  • Psalm 119:82 – Waiting

    Psalm 119:82 – Waiting

    My eyes are failing from looking for your promise.
    I’m asking, “When will you comfort me?”

    The process of meditating on a verse like this is very different from the process of exegesis. I can dig out the details of this verse fairly quickly.. There’s not that much that’s controversial about the text or translation.

    But meditating is different. It’s not just about the verse itself, but about what that suggests. I had to go back and read the verse several times. I wonder if that’s because I really don’t like what the verse itself implies.

    Here’s one of the writers of scripture. We don’t actually know who wrote the Psalm, but it’s nice to think of David, simply because he had so many experiences that fit well into the message of the text. But whoever it was, it was someone who wrote poetry and that poetry became scripture. That person’s testimony is that his eyes wore out with watching for God to fulfill God’s promise and provide him with comfort.

    Comfort? That’s in one way a very uncomfortable thought. I don’t particularly like to wait. I like to know now. I like to receive now. Though these days I often fail, I like to do now. Waiting is bad.

    I’m reminded of Job. Many years ago, I heard about Job as a theodicy, an attempt to explain why, with a sovereign God, there is suffering. The problem is that the book of Job does no such thing. It makes no attempt to justify God’s actions. In fact, Job himself has no idea of what is going on.

    Not only does Job have to wait, but he has to suffer through all those long speeches. And what Job wants is to know that God hears him, that he is not alone in all this. He doesn’t really ask for an explanation. Job wants a hearing!

    When that hearing comes, it’s not all that helpful in content and explanation. What it does is show that God is aware of Job’s problem, and that is what Job wants.

    I don’t know what specific promise the psalmist was waiting for. If the author is David we know he had to spend years as a fugitive, waiting for the fulfillment of the promise that he would be king. It’s likely he had moments when his eyes were worn out with waiting and wondering when God would act.

    Each of us has things that we want, that we have prayed for, and even that we may believe God has promised us. When these things don’t happen, we want to head off in another direction or decide that God is not with us. But Job waited until he got that hearing. David waited until the crown came to him.

    There’s a promise in this verse, one that could be reaffirmed by God’s people throughout time. It’s worthwhile waiting. The hearing is coming. The crown is coming. Your reward is coming. Wait for it.

    Perhaps we might borrow some attitude from Habakkuk, who asks God a question and then stands at his post. “I shall take up my position on the watch-tower, keeping a look-out to learn what he says to me, how he responds to my complaint” (Habakkuk 2:1, REB). I also recall the character Puddleglum in C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, who, confronted with the idea that there was no Aslan said (I paraphrase) “I’m on Aslan’s side even if there’s no Aslan to lead it.”

    There is hope in this verse because the backstory must be that the author believed the promise, waited on the promise, wore his eyes out looking for the promise, but he’s now here writing about it.

    What are you waiting for? Keep a look-out for God’s move!

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

    The Heart Cries Out
    Finding Rest for Our Souls
    Seeing the Psalter
  • Psalm 119:74 – Wait

    Psalm 119:74 – Wait

    Those who fear you see me and rejoice,
    Because I wait for your word.

    Again, there are a number of ways to translate, especially the verb tenses. In a poetic form, that is challenging. I see this as a continuous state rather than a prediction. Those who see the psalmist rejoice, precisely because he is awaiting God’s word.

    We could discuss the value of recognizing God’s work in the lives of others. That is one of the things that helps create community. We recognize God’s grace in action and it’s time to rejoice.

    But the word that caught most of my attention today is the word “wait.” It can be translated “hope” as well as “wait.” We don’t like the word “wait” and even “hope” can be a problem when we remember that if we’re hoping, we don’t have it yet! And we’re back to “wait,” which we don’t like.

    But waiting is critical. Timing can be important and if you don’t learn to wait, you are likely to miss many things. You can miss something as easily by rushing and being too early as by being too late.

    And what is the psalmist waiting for? God’s word.

    With waiting there is listening, listening for God’s word. This can come to you in so many different ways. I recall once that I had been trying to make a decision. The situation was one were right and wrong seemed ambiguous. I was talking with a friend asking for prayer and advice, and as we were praying and talking about it, suddenly something became very clear.

    Did I hear a voice? No.

    Were there words written on tablets of stone? No.

    Did I have a vision? No.

    I believe God can speak in all of those ways. God has spoken in all those ways. But the “word of God” that I received after waiting that time was simply the sudden understanding of what was the right thing to do. In a flash I knew that one of the courses of action I was considering could not be carried out ethically, so there was really only one choice.

    Can you wait for that knowledge of what God’s word says about any situation?

    Here are some helpful books I publish on this topic

    When People Speak for God
    God Still Speaks
    The Power of Obedience