James 5:7,8 – “Pondering Patience”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁷Therefore, brothers, be patient until the coming of the Lord. Look! The farmer awaits the precious fruit of the earth, being patient upon it, until he receives [the] early and latter [rains]. ⁸You, also, be patient and establish your hearts, because the coming of the Lord has drawn near.

Patience. Staying under it. Staying calm.

It’s one of the fruits of the Spirit – “love, joy, peace, patience …” It’s one of the qualities God calls us to cultivate – “Be patient therefore brothers …” – and yet it is a fruit of the Spirit – something we cannot manufacture. “Against such things there is no law.” A fruit of the Spirit is a work of the Spirit. Even as I type, I don’t know in this case, how the two work together – how I can somehow “work” at learning to be calm and patient while at the same time realizing it is a work of the Spirit and something I can’t produce. Hmmmmm. So I’ll keep praying and thinking and doing whatever seems right and see if He shows me something …

I like what Jay Adams says about this call to patience: “It is a command to become impervious to pressure; it is a call to abandon all spiritual weaknesses that cause us to fall apart when the waiting is long and the struggle is intense.”

“Impervious to pressure.” Yes. That is it. That is what I want to become. My heart is convinced all that matters is to love God and love people, that I can be totally confident in my good and wise God. Yet, when I face the calamities of life, that same heart goes to pieces, and this awful engine of fear and worry winds up to about 10,000 RPM inside of me and sucks the very life and energy out of me. “Impervious to pressure.” That’s exactly what we should be. And why not? The Lord is on His throne and He is coming.

Hmmmm. One thing I think worth noting is that, for a Christian, being “impervious to pressure” means keeping up our love, our sweet spirit, staying faithful at whatever are our responsibilities in life, keeping up that confidence in God, even in the face of seemingly intense pressures. It is worth pointing out, I think, that this is patently not what many would resort to – the hard-heartedness, indifference, or stoicism, the “I have no choice anyway. It is what it is. There’s no use fighting it. I don’t see it changing anyway …” James’ call is to “establish your hearts.” Your hearts. As usual, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. The change that must occur is in our hearts, not just our behavior. It is a change in how we view the situation, what we’re thinking. So “impervious to pressure” doesn’t just mean whatever we want to make it. It is a change in our hearts that, therefore, allows us to live above whatever may be going on around us.

James calls us to consider two things – the example of a farmer and the Coming of the Lord. I guess I’ve never noticed before how the work of a farmer is really a grand fractal of life itself: He has much work to do. He must clear the ground, then plow it and plant it. Then he must weed it and protect it from pests. When it is ready he must go out and harvest it. He does all this while he has no control at all over how seeds in the ground germinate, how plants grow, whether or not it rains or the sun shines. Sounds just like my dilemma above – how the Lord wants me to “work” and yet the work itself is a fruit of the Spirit. But I guess most of all, He’s wanting us to see how it is a “working and waiting” sort of endeavor. It is something we must “stay at” regardless of the many, many things that could (and might) go wrong, in spite of the many things that do go wrong. A farmer simply has to “stay at it.”

And we live knowing that the Lord is coming. Somehow, we have to keep in mind this is all for Him. “And whatever you do, do it with your whole heart, as to the Lord and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance. For you serve the Lord Christ.” The Master will return. Then all that will matter is how we served Him. “He who rides to be crowned will not mind a rainy day” – John Trapp.

It all makes perfect sense.

I just don’t seem to know how to make it “work” as I face those calamities, how to turn off the engine churning inside me. Oh, well. No matter. I am confident the Lord is teaching me all of this, running me through all these “calamities” because He has every intention of changing me from the inside out. Once again, I will go on praying, and studying, and trying to do what seems to be right, and “wait and see what He will show me.”

Patience.