Week Six

Patience

According to the dictionary, patience is the capacity to persevere over time, despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity. Rather than a passive state of helpless waiting, practicing patience can mean choosing a positive attitude, adjusting expectations, and managing emotional reactions.

This is another aspect of prophetic hope. Let go, and let God, being confident (or having faith) that we need not know the future, but trust that God is making the future. This is creation: the on-going process of God's making something new.

There is a famous quote, often attributed to Oscar Romero, but actually written by Bishop Ken Untener. I hope you take the time to read it carefully, and then try to apply it to your own self, your own situation.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.