Wait on the Lord

I have been preaching on the fruit of the Spirit, the first being love and that we are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. We see also that the first fruit of love is patience. This requires that we wait on the Lord but that we also wait on one another. This is easy to say and very hard to do.

         In fact, it is so hard that only one practiced in love is patient and the truly patient are practiced in love. Patience is a mark of maturity and impatience a mark of childishness. We are to be childlike in our faith but grown up in our perseverance. But one of the marks of a childlike faith is the perseverance that a child has through manifold trials. They survive, somehow, and look to God to deliver them in the time of need. While children can be impatient in the immediate, they also have a persevering tendency that reveals an eternally springing hope. This renewable hope is a Spirit given endurance, apparent in children and wearing thin in adults.

         We adults must also learn this kind of perseverance. Sometimes, it seems, we grow old too quickly, and stop fighting and stop hoping and our perseverance grows weak. But a weak perseverance is not all bad, either, because our strength comes from the Lord. So, let us confess our tendency to grow weary in the race, perhaps so weary we stop running, and take up our faith in Jesus and so be renewed in hope, to the end that we persevere in hope, waiting on the Lord.