My prayer for today is that God teach me more patience. Please be patient with me as I muse about several things at least remotely related to this challenge of patience.
Leaning patience is no easy thing as one journeys the spiritual pathway, wanting to run ahead, to investigate new beauties, to see what lies ahead. The danger in forging ahead is that one may fail to see and enjoy the present. The danger in dallying is that one may fail to seize fresh opportunities that are just ahead. Some are content to stand still and enjoy what is rather than finding out what can be. The opposite way of making the journey may be equally empty.
Sometimes Christians face this dilemma and hardly know the source of the conflict. The problem often intensifies when one moves and enters a new church family. What if the new church is miles away from where you have been on your journey? What if they are far behind? or far ahead?
It is no easy task for shepherds of God’s flock–keeping the lariat around the entire herd (flock), bringing them along, letting some run ahead and other lag behind.
It is no easy task for ministers and preachers. How does one touch all who come to worship on a given Sunday? Preaching is no easy task–the more years I preached, the longer it took to prepare my sermons. Not just an outline–that got easier with practice and experience. But the details, the wordsmithing, the thoughtful development of ideas designed to touch all who would enter God’s presence.
Let me illustrate the challenge. A few years ago, a good ministry friend and I were both approached by the same church as potential candidates for an open ministry position. I doubt the inviting church knew that we were good friends. Neither of us accepted the invitation to apply. We saw one another later that summer at a workshop hosted by a well-known theological school. I asked why he had not considered the position. He said something about having to regress ten years in his spiritual journey in order to minister effectively in that church. He went on to explain that he would have to go back to where he used to be, enter a new church system, and bring the church along the same path he had already traveled. At 55 years old, he did not have time to travel the same path again–he was impatient to see what was ahead spiritually. He actually admitted it. I must admit that I sympathized with him.
Indeed, patience is no easy thing. I want to move forward–agressively. I shall only come this way once, I have no intention of regressing, help me be patient enough to bring others along on the journey.