James 5:7-11 Patience

 

Observation: James is the pastor of the church in Jerusalem, but he’ll always go down in history as “the Lord’s brother.” I have to say, something I appreciate about his writings is the “family resemblance” in his writing. Just in this little snippet we have a parable about agriculture, a warning about coming judgment, and a promise for those who are suffering, that theirs is the same lot as the prophets. It does feel wonderfully familiar.

But even by the time of James’ writing, a new theme has emerged: patience. I think one of the first seismic shifts in the early church was coming to grips with the reality that Jesus might not come back in their own lifetimes. And in the meantime, life is hard for Christ-believers. “Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near…” even if it feels so far away.

Application: I think we’ve learned more about patience this past seventeen months than we ever thought we’d have to. We’ve spent a lot of time obsessed with the return of a status quo that will likely never come back. At the same time, some religious leaders have had to be the “patience police” for others, pumping the brakes on the drive to get back in our sanctuaries, get back to communing the way we knew, singing the way we knew, worshiping the way we knew…

Something I’ve learned about patience during this time is: we tend to have a never-ending well of it when it comes to familiar things, but precious little of it when it comes to new things. We’re hard pressed to try something new more than twice if it’s not an astonishing success, but when it comes to something we know how to do, we’re all too happy to keep at it for years after it’s been proven ineffective.

We’re going to have to work on that going forward: being a little more impatient with the familiar, because as we’ve seen, it could evaporate at any moment. But being a little more patient with the new things God may be doing among us. If God calls us to try something once, maybe we shouldn’t be afraid to tweak it, and try it twice. Like those crops James talked about, maybe it’ll take an early and a late rain to make a new thing grow, which will bear fruit for God’s world.

“strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.” I believe that. But it probably won’t look the way we picture. So right now, maybe patience means following Jesus’ lead, and letting new things grow.

Prayer: Dear Jesus, give us patience. Help us water the crops in our souls we know the world needs, even when they are slower growing than the weeds we are used to. In your name we pray. Amen.