A couple weeks ago our kids virtue in Sunday School was patience. I’ve thought about that a lot lately. A couple years back I began to realize I actually enjoyed working in my garden. But there were some aspects of it, like my crepe myrtles that were just in no hurry to bloom. I wanted everything happening at the same time. But some things simply take longer.
I had to remind myself of this when I got home last Thursday after being gone for ten days. I had just finished up a wonderful book tour, and three fabulous days of an “VBS – goes on the road” event in South Carolina. For ten days I had received all kinds of praise and accolades. People would tell me how much they were enjoying “Hurricanes.” I received countless emails and postings on Facebook about how much VBS ministered to the ladies nightly. And then I got home…and I realized, not all rewards are immediate. Not all good gardens grow quickly.
Ministry hasn’t grown quickly…don’t get me wrong. It has been birthed out of my deepest places of pain, and I’ve been doing it for over a decade now. But the response is often immediate. And now with Facebook it seems even quicker than that!
I did have three of our five meet me down the road on their bikes and ride with me home. But their were other little hears not as thrilled that I was home. In those moments the human part of me tend to scream. Not surprisingly either as I had just taught on learning how to take our thoughts captive at VBS, that I’d immediately be attacked in mine. But when I settle my soul before my Father, I remember that good gardens, masterpieces, take time. Few things stood as stately or sweeping or beautiful in my garden as my crepe myrtles. And few things were more tempermental or slow. So, I reminded myself what I Corinthians 9 says, I am fighting for an imperishable crown. Soil takes a while to till, gardens take a while to grow, and hearts can take a while to enter. But eternal deposits…oh my…eternal deposits reap a beautiful harvest.
The other day I was sitting in the bathroom with two of our girls as they were talking about how desperately they wanted something and I reminded them of their virtue that month. I told them God was helping them put their virtue into practice and that there was no better way than having to wait for something you so desperately wanted.
He does that for all his children. And the only way for something to be tested, or taught is to be experienced. Kind of like I am now. There are moments I wish I had a magic eight ball to shake and show me what life will be like ten years down the road. But instead I remind myself, “Let patience have its perfect work.” Because it does…it has a perfect work. “Do not throw away your confidence because it will be richly rewarded. If you perservere in doing the the will of God you will receive all He has promised.” And I know that is true. or “Do not grow weary in well doing for in due season you will reap if you faint not.” I always remind myself of this on the days that I am so weary in doing well. And my new favorite, “I will supply all of your needs according to my riches in Christ Jesus.” And I am thinking Jesus was pretty rich in patience. If I doubt it just think of how old Peter almost wore him out.
When I get my eyes off of the temporal and onto the eternal I hear phone calls ten years from now from our little ones desiring my input and opinion. I see grandbabies who will always have me as part of their memories and I see Mother Day cards that were actually given to me because of what the years have deposited.
It’s amazing in this life how it is so easy to forget that this isn’t our home. That we are strangers and pilgrims, so even our tools of survival here have to be other wordly. Few things are other wordly as patience. Father, as you test ours may it grow. As you remind us why we’re here may the journey get easier and on the days our patience has to be placed into action may we remember that in due season we will reap all the benefits of the beauty that crepe myrtles bring…may we remember this even as the season of all blooming is coming to an end…
