At the house where Logan and I lived in Johnstown, we planted a peach tree in the front yard. I picked it out mostly for the flowers in the spring, but I thought the fresh peaches would be nice too! Unfortunately, we never got to enjoy any, because we moved here before it could start growing the kind of fruit that you’d want to harvest and not just leave out for the birds. Turns out, that takes a few years! I hope the people who live there now are enjoying it, but there’s still a dead basket of mums sitting on the porch from our open house, so maybe not. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished,” the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said. Trees are in no hurry; they take as long as they take to bear fruit. You can’t rush these things, and patience is rewarded with good fruit.

“The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient.” says James. Patience is actually not a character trait, even though it seems to come easier to some people than other. Patience is a fruit of the spirit, that means it takes time to grow. It is more like a skill you can learn. That’s why they say if you pray to God for patience, you’re likely receive an opportunity to practice it. Patience gets easier with time and perspective. Patience is a kind of wisdom. You gain it through experience. So, I asked my Facebook friends to share their experiences with me by answering the question, “If you could give your younger self some words of wisdom about patience… What would you say?” I got some really great answers, and I’m excited to share some of their wisdom with you.

Rebecca Cline said, “Patience is a breath before reacting.” If you want to practice patience, start with a breath. Like any skill you start out small, you train, and you get better. We build patience like a muscle by using it, so try seeing your daily hassles as opportunities to exercise. Push yourself to be calm instead of frustrated. Slow yourself down when you’re in a hurry or being impatient. It doesn’t have to be perfect; you just have to practice.

Sandy Behler said, “Patience takes years and wisdom to develop – use all that you have and strive for more.” Patience develops over time; sometimes a lot of time. It can’t be rushed. When you’ve seen more of the bigger picture, things that seemed once huge and stressful will start to seem small and manageable. Being patient gets easier.

Lorna Lindsley shared a photo that said, “Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in your mind” (– David G. Allen) That one’s hard for me, I like things to happen in the order that I had planned out, but sometimes it’s better when I don’t get my way and I just need to accept that. Patrick Acurio said, “Sometimes it pays to just let things play out, trust yourself, trust God.”

I was thinking about patience yesterday while Logan and I were helping his sister and her husband clean their new house. It’s a beautiful and funky house, straight out of the sixties with a beautiful yard. It’s a bit of a fixer upper, just like ours was when we bought it. Logan helped them replace a toilet, and I filled some holes in the walls, and it made me start thinking about how far our own house has come from where we first started, and how impossible it seemed that we would ever get it all done when we first walked in with the keys. But our smelly carpet is gone and replaced now. Our walls have been patched and re-painted. We are just now finally finishing our bathroom renovation, which was low on our list because it wasn’t broken – just ugly.

I’m so proud of all the work that we’ve done even though it has tested our patience. We’ve spent most of our time in this house living in a construction zone. We haven’t been able to fix everything at once; we’ve had to save up funds and take it one project at a time. It hasn’t been quick, but it has been rewarding, and now I love our house more than ever. It has been worth the sweat and dust, and I’m excited to see what my sister and brother in-law will do to their new home. If they are patient with it, I believe that they will make it beautiful. You see, patience is more than just waiting. To be patient is not to cease moving. Patient means moving with trust, towards a future that you believe will come as you continue walking through life with God.

Jim Lichtenberg said, “Even when things seem like they will never get any better, God hears our prayers and in God’s time, God can bring you joy beyond anything you could ever imagine.”

Ellen Nolan said, “The things that felt so hopeless and tested my patience the most have become the sweetest rewards in my life.”

Reading all this advice reminds me of Isaiah’s words, “Do you not know?” “Have you not heard?” God is everlasting! Even youths may grow tired and weary, but God never does. God is the source of our strength. Wait for God, and you will be renewed. There’s a kind of certainty to Isaiah’s words here that might rub us the wrong way if we’re in a difficult season of waiting. But Isaiah isn’t just writing about what he hopes to true, he’s writing what he has known to be true in his experience of God. Patience is hard for a prophet living through the end of a kingdom. Waiting on the Lord can be painful, but his assurance is, if you do wait, someday change and renewal will come.

Sometimes it comes very slowly, so subtle that you don’t even notice it, until one day you find yourself sitting in a moment that you never thought would happen, feeling a joy that you never thought you’d feel, in a place that you never even thought you’d be! It is a truth I know because I’ve felt it, and it always fills me with awe. When the thing that you longed for becomes your reality and you realize you made it through, then all that patience was worth it.

In April I spent a weekend in Philadelphia with a bunch of other young UCC pastors who are a part of a group called NGLI. We get together a couple of times a year from across the nation to be inspired by each other and by what people are doing in other UCC churches. On Sunday we worshipped at a church called Salt & Light. Which is a cool name, because two churches decided to come together, and they both gave up their old names to become Salt & Light to their community. The Rev. Cean James, a former NGLI participant himself, led a wonderful service, and there was one moment, not even from the sermon, that really stuck with me. He reminded us that we were there in that place that morning because of all the times when God made a way for us where there seemed to be no way. Even when we didn’t know that it was happening, God was making a through the wilderness for us that brought us here, now, today. When we did not know the way, Jesus was already being the way, the truth, and the life.

Patience is and act of trust in God, and that trust gets easier when you can look back at the places God has led you through and the things that you have overcome. Things that were once disappointing, or difficult, can become a valuable part of who we are, and take us to beautiful places and people we love if we wait on God. It’s not wrong to feel fear and anxiety about the future but hurrying and worrying only cause us to miss out on the joy of the present. Trust in God’s timing. Allow yourself to be a living and growing thing. Let it take as long as it takes for you to become the person God made you to be. Don’t give up before you’ve even begun, and don’t rush into your future. There is a time for everything, so let everything come in its own time. Believe that everything can and will change, and be patient and kind with yourself in the waiting. May it be so for you! Amen.