Their hands were greedy. They ripped at the paper as if what was on the inside would be enough to fill the wanting for anything else for the rest of the year. But after the paper rested in piles of misshapen wads the surprise of Christmas morning was a distant memory. But we did our best to make it last. We go around the room one at a time enjoying the surprise on the other’s face, our joy of watching them get something they have wanted, and then we go to the next one. We have done everything we can to delay the gratification. To savor the magic. The holy. The morning. The Christmas.
“Let patience have it’s perfect work.” The writer of James writes in his first chapter. Yet, patience always involves waiting. I remember our littlest one sitting at the bar a few years back waiting on me as I was fixing her dinner and she said, “Sometimes it’s just so hard to wait when you want it so bad.” I laughed, but I knew. Sometimes it is hard to wait when you want it so bad.
When you want the first kiss. The first baby. The first miracle. The first phone call. The first diagnosis. It can be so hard. But patience does have a “perfect work.” It has to or James wouldn’t have told us it did. In fact, it is tied to that fruit of “joy” we talked about two weeks ago. The deep, resolute joy. The kind that comes not from resolutions vowed as New Years enter, but of relationship lived out fully, completely alive, even when the trials come. And come they do. The spouse that hasn’t shown up. The baby that your arms never hold. The miracle that doesn’t come as you hoped. The diagnosis that isn’t what you wanted. The phone call that never arrives. It’s the testing trial. The one that tests our faith, a fruit we’ve yet to explore. That beats at our endurance, forcing our patience to grow.
And it does have a choice. We can choose the response in the testing of a faith season. Patience always has a choice. Why? Because patience is holy. This kind. And the unholy loves to creep in when the holy is being honed. Patience greatest antagonist is control. Control grasps. Patience frees. Control demands. Patience trusts. Control dictates. Patience surrenders. Control judges, shames, manipulates, is always right. Patience graces, encourages, follows and is teachable.
And patience in the end we are told, can be complete, needing nothing. Does that mean we are then self-sufficient? No, it means we have come to the undeniable truth that we are fully sufficient in Christ. We are complete in Him. So, let patience have its perfect work.
