Patience until the Lord's coming
5:7 Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
5:8 You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.
5:9 Brothers and sisters, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors!
At this point in December, when I was a child, Christmas was an eternity away, and so close that every night I could imagine waking up on Christmas morning. Usually my brother and I slept past sunrise until Christmas Day, but one year we woke up at 4, woke our parents up with our noise, and had Christmas in the night. Well, the sun came up by the time we’d finished.
Later, I’d just be anticipating the end of the school year (which it wasn’t, but we treated it that way) and all the time off for Xmas. Two weeks! It was an eternity.
In college, the semester actually ended, early in December; and a new semester started in January, almost 30 days later.
What I really anticipated then was semester’s end, and the time to do as I pleased until the new one started. I didn’t think about the “precious cro” my education was supposed to be producing. What did I know? I’d been in school since I was 5. 16 years later (my lifetime! It seemed), I was slightly older and certainly no wiser. I didn’t really know what I was anticipating. so I didn’t know what I had.
“You also must be patient”
That’s easier to do at 70 than it was at even 20. It leads me to guess the church James is writing to is young; young and excitable, and impatient for what they think is coming. Or he just assumes the general audience of Christians needs to hear some wisdom, and wisdom is associated with old people, who are usually… less impatient.
Patient for what?
The letter of James is famously about deeds speaking louder than words. So he refers, not to the words of the prophets, but their actions. Their suffering and patience; which is part of their prophecies, just not the part we usually think about. But words are empty without actions, aren’t they? Their actions were: suffering; patience; and speaking in the name of the Lord. I guess the first and second lead to the third? They can certainly be prelude to wisdom; although that’s hardly a certainty. And wisdom isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.
It takes wisdom to know wisdom. Quite the paradox, isn’t it?
Yes, there is a point to this. Be patient.
That’s how this works, isn’t it? You must be patient. Strengthen your hearts. Part of the relationship of age and patience is that in old(er) age, you grow tired, and have less energy to spend on anticipation. That, and you remember too much, and don’t look forward to new experiences, because they are just variations on themes you know by now. Patience requires holding off anticipation for the new. “New” becomes more and more familiar as time goes by.
The hard part is still to strengthen your heart. That still takes action. Let your actions speak for themselves. Let your words rest. Prepare yourself for the coming of the Lord. It can be a lot of work. The kind of work that takes a lot of patience.
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