Love is patient.

Why?  Why shouldn’t love be impatient?  Aggressive.  Demanding.  Action oriented.  Results oriented.  Goal driven.  For all the right reasons, of course.

Love is patient.

Why shouldn’t love take the bull by the horns, seize the day, and make the most of the opportunity?  Why should love put off till tomorrow what need not be done today, and contravene Benjamin Franklin?

Love is patient.

Why isn’t love type A?  Why isn’t it a doer rather than thinker, a risk taker rather than risk avoider, an actor rather than an observer?

Love is patient.

What is it waiting for?  Why should love let grass grow under its feet?  Moss on its back?  Barnacles on its hull?

Love is patient.

Why should love look and sound more like a wax museum than a carnival?  More like baseball or golf than basketball, hockey, soccer or NASCAR?  More like chess than boxing?

Love is patient.

Why isn’t love in the fast lane, the passing lane, accelerating, passing, exhilarating, making good time, winning the race?  Why is it parked by the side of the road, feet on the dashboard, sipping ice tea?

Love is patient.

Patient for what?  What is it waiting for?

What is He waiting for?

Why is love patient?

Because love does not seek its own.  Love does not have its own agenda.  Love waits, hears, listens and perceives.  Love understands and knows.  Really knows.

Love trusts.  Love believes all things.  Love does not see itself as the answer, the solution, the one that must tightly and minutely control and manage all of the moving parts to get to the desired outcome.  Love does not micromanage.  Love is not in charge.  Not the boss.

Love trusts.  Trusts God.  Trusts others.  Risks.  Is vulnerable.

Love can wait, because love does not take on itself responsibilities that do not belong to it.

Love does not see itself as the ultimate answer.  Love understands its role.  How to fit in.  Blend in.  Contribute.  Love knows how to be constructively additive rather than disruptive.

Because love is patient.

This drives us humans crazy.  We want solutions and we want them now.  We want an immediate end to pain, poverty, oppression, disease, injustice, discomfort and needs of all kinds.

So does God.  But love is patient.

He sees the end from the beginning.

But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.  The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.  2 Peter 3:8-9

God has ordained a new heaven and new earth.  A millennial reign.  Lord, we long for that day.  It will arrive.  Maranantha – come quickly.  But for now we live in in between times.  And God is patient.

Not idle.  Patient.  Not lazy, not asleep, not procrastinating.  Patient.  Actively patient.

God can transport instantly if He wants to.  Just ask Phillip.  Or He can take 40 years to move a people a few hundred miles.  Just ask Moses.

There is usually more at stake than an outcome.  The outcome may not be the objective, or the most important objective.

Love takes a step back.  Takes a breath.  Hears from God.

Sometimes circumstances seem urgent and critical.  A house is on fire.  Someone is drowning.  Seconds matter and there is no time to lose.  True.  But even then, even and especially then, when immediate response risks becoming panic that bars good judgment, one must first take stock and act wisely, even if that process is only a moment or a few seconds.  A flailing, failed, destructive response is worse than no response.

Of course there will come a time for action.  But love is patient.  And sometimes the admonition must be:  don’t just do something, stand there.  And listen, pray, watch, perceive, understand.  First.

Love is patient, but it is not dead.  Patience is not perpetual inactivity.  It is waiting, praying and perceiving first, and then and only then acting with wisdom and discretion.  The actions that will follow patience can be done with more conviction, more clarity, more efficiency, and more effectiveness, with less collateral damage and unintended consequences than what impetuousness produces.

Jesus waited 30 years to begin His ministry.  Thirty years!  Longer, when one counts the eternity that preceded it.  And even then He did not rush to the Cross.  There were three years of teaching, relationship building, discipling, and preparing.  And prayer.  Lots of prayer.  Up to and including the night on which He was betrayed, in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The appearance of the Messiah and His death were foreordained from before the foundation of the world.  They were preached and announced, among other times and places, hundreds of years before hand by Isaiah.  And they occurred at just the right time.

Love is patient.  Not asleep or neglectful.  Not slow.  But also not in a hurry.  Not pushing.  Not rushing.  Waiting.  For what?  For the right time.  Not lying in wait as in ambush.  But caring deeply, wanting to hurt or offend no one.  Willing to delay the hoped for outcome for the sake of others.  Because people are always more important than objectives.  Love moves at the pace of the slowest sheep.

For love to be patient is to be lovingly strategic.  Strategic not to maximize an agenda, but to ensure all benefit from it.  Sometimes this means God’s schedule is not ours.  Sometimes it means the schedule has to be revised.  Sometimes a day may be like a thousand years.

Because love is patient.

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