Learning to Wait
May 24, 2024 - Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
James 5:9-12
Today's excerpt from the letter of James emphasizes the virtue of patience. In our instant gratification culture, this virtue has lost its appeal, but it becomes increasingly clear that without it, we cannot succeed in life. We have to learn again how to wait, how to be patient under different circumstances of life, because we sense that although it is not easy to be patient, "its fruit is sweet" (Aristotle).
James wants us to learn patience and perseverance from the ancient prophets and biblical Job. Among the prophets who proclaimed God's message to Israel up to the tragic year of 586 BC were Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Ezekiel. Their message was not heeded, their lives were marked by hardships, and some of them were killed by the very people they wanted to bring back to the Lord. However, their message recorded in writing endures to this day and has brought repentance to many people. On the other hand, the book of Job presents a person who, after losing everything in life and enduring terrible suffering, was rewarded in the end with more than he lost.
At the heart of the Old Testament is the message that "the Lord, the Lord, our God, [is] merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love and fidelity" (Exodus 34:6). This message sustained the Jews in the darkest moments of their history, from the Babylonian Exile of 586 BC through the disastrous consequences of the Roman-Jewish wars in 66-74 AD and 132-135 AD, until the Holocaust of 1933 to 1945. Whether the prophets, the psalmist, or the Rabbis, all of them often reminded the Lord, themselves, and their people of that truth. James did the same for his brothers and sisters who suffered persecution for their faith in Jesus.
The statement that "the Lord is compassionate and merciful" brings to mind all those moments when the Lord intervened with His mighty power to transform suffering into health, slavery into freedom, tears into joy, and death into life. The prime example of this truth is the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By enduring such terrible suffering for our sake, Jesus became "the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him" (Hebrews 5:9).
Some say that the Chinese Bamboo Tree takes up to 5 years to sprout above ground, but it only needs a few weeks to grow 25 meters tall. Imagine the patience of a farmer who has to wait so long to see the fruit of his labor. Let us learn how to wait, let us dedicate more time to prayer, and patiently wait to see the transforming power of God's grace in our lives and in the world.