James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11, Isaiah 35, Psalm 146
We have a young grapefruit tree at home. This season it grew 3 fruit to maturity. It lost the rest of the crop in the dry part of last summer. I expect grapefruit to fall from the tree when ripe. I’m still waiting for the third and last of this year’s crop to fall. I thought it would have fallen by now but I have to be patient. I think I’ll give it till Christmas Day.
Patience is something we all need, especially at this time of year. Advent is waiting time – I think I’ve said that before – and, as James says, it is good to “Wait with patience.” We all need patience and lots of it. I’m noticing a little inconsistency lately. People expressing some irritation with having to wait but in the next breath are commenting that the year seems to have flown by and it’s Christmas already and where did the time go?
Farmers wait patiently; so must we. Impatience breeds irritability which leads to not getting on with one another. Stress, which is endemic at this time of year, feeds our irritability. Annoying and being annoyed by one another puts us in line for God’s judgement against us – good reason to exercise patience. James says be like farmers. Then he says follow the example of the prophets. In particular he refers to their patient endurance under suffering. Yeah, but who wants suffering? Suffering is painful. But pain has a purpose – it motivates us to remove whatever is causing the pain. This is true whether it is ourselves or someone else who is suffering.
When we get impatient we try to make things happen ahead of their schedule. This is often destructive. For example, when a butterfly is working its way out of its cocoon it has to work very hard. A human observer may want to help the creature and to speed up the process and allieviate its ‘suffering’. But a butterfly that is ‘helped’ in that way will die. The work of crawling out of the cocoon is necessary to shape and strengthen the butterfly and to get all its systems working. Don’t think of that work as suffering – for all we know it could be exhilirating.
Trust God. His timing is perfect. Even our suffering is for our benefit. As someone once said, “I prayed for strength and God gave me hardship to make me strong.”
James says that the day of our Lord’s coming is near. It’s always near. In fact it’s 2,000 years nearer than when James wrote those words. We have to wait with endurance and we can because we know that all wrongs will be righted in God’s time. We may not be vindicated or see wrongs righted in our lifetime – many of the prophets didn’t either – so we need patience waiting for Jesus to return; we need patience for all the waits in life.
In Matthew we see how John was suffering and he was having doubts. He was in prison when he sent his friends to check if he’d pointed to the right man as Messiah. This was John, the mighty prophet, in a weak moment.
John was aware of God’s presence before he was born. Remember? When Mary who was pregnant with Jesus visited Elizabeth who was pregnant with John, Elizabeth reported that her baby lept with excitement when Mary entered the room.
Thirty years later, John stepped out in the power of God to prepare people for the Messiah’s arrival.
John was a prophet and, as prophets do, he spoke against unrighteousness, challenging Herod the king to live right. But Herod didn’t want to face the consequences of his actions and he put John in prison.
Prison does things to people. It can shake their confidence; bend their minds. John was having doubts. Jesus answered John’s doubts in an encouraging way. Then he praised John, spelling out John’s role in the kingdom of God. Hopefully, that too was reported back to John.
When you hear of people in prison, especially those imprisoned for their faith, it is good to pray for them that their faith stays strong. But then, we don’t have to be in prison to have doubts. There are many things that can make it hard for us to hang on to what we know and believe. That’s why we need to pray for one another and al Christians to sustain faith. And that’s also why we need to talk of God – his love and his activity – with one another to help us to keep faith going.
We can go over Bible passages like the one we read from Isaiah which gives a lovely picture of the Kingdom of God that is coming – shows it is very much something to look forward to. And we can do what it says in verse 4: Tell everyone who is discouraged, “Be strong and don’t be afraid! God is coming to your rescue, coming to punish your enemies.” It doesn’t just say, “Be strong and don’t be afraid!” it gives good reason to be strong and unafraid.
Jesus himself is a good example of patient endurance.
What we see in Matthew 11 is that Jesus, having inaugurated the kingdom of God, was facing rejection from many of his Jewish people. But he carried on with those who accepted him and he completed his mission (which brought salvation to all people). We can feel rejected by many – consider the latest cencus figures – but stick with Jesus and fulfil your mission. Jesus patiently endured.
When we choose to follow Christ as our Lord, he begins the process of making us more like him each day. It is not a matter of pretending to be what we aren’t but of becoming more and more what we are in Christ.
So be like a prophet. Patiently endure while you speak God’s message. God’s message for people today is for them to open their lives to Jesus the Messiah, to put things right with him and to be ready for Jesus when he returns.
Hopefully the Hope Project will go ahead next year and we will have more than usual opportunity to communicate God’s message. In that direction I am doing research to find opening for that message and effective ways to get it across. Also, in the new year, we will ourselves be working on how to engage people in conversations that communicate the gospel.
My prayer for you: may you have the patience and endurance of a prophet. May you be strong in your faith and not afraid, knowing that God is coming to end all suffering and that he is with us always. And may you speak God’s message to prepare people for the coming of the Messiah.