Isaiah 64:1-2
Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down
so that the mountains would quake in your presence,
2 as when fire sets brushwood ablaze
or causes water to boil.
The world we live in, requires almost no waiting. We can get what we want almost instantly. We microwave our food. We can google just about anything. We can instantly pull up any song we want to listen to on our phones. Food is just a drive thru away. Amazon delivers packages over nite. Target and Wal-mart will deliver your purchase the same day. Fast, easy, convenient. If you are in business and you can’t deliver fast, easy and convenient, then you are not in the game.
I wonder how living in a culture of no waiting, affects our thinking and expectations of God. We still have to wait for somethings. Growing a garden takes a lot of work and we have to wait patiently for the fruits of our labor. Making babies still takes 9 months. As much as we decorate earlier and earlier, Christmas still takes a full year to get here again. Somethings can’t be rushed. Does our culture of instant gratification diminish our ability to wait on God? How do we understand perseverance and persistence? When we do wait or persevere, is it only the result of having no other options or is it a practice that we faithfully engage in?
The opening two verses in this weeks OT reading struck me as it reminded me of the saying, “A watched pot never boils”. When we are waiting on something, it seems to take forever. Even though we are sure that the pot is going to boil, our impatience seems to start boiling first. But because we are absolutely sure that the water will boil, we don’t give up. But that surety, that faith, does it translate into our spiritual practices?
Water does not boil upon contact with a flame. A blazing fire starts with a spark. It takes some time for the process to work.
My brethren, consider it a cause of great joy whenever you endure various trials, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith will develop perseverance. 4 And let perseverance complete its work so that you may become perfect and complete, and not be deficient in any respect. James 1:2-4
Perseverance is not the goal, becoming like Christ is. But perseverance is necessary for that to happen. Could God just zap us into being like Christ? Maybe, but the fact is He doesn’t. We live in a world in which all things were created by Him, through Him, and for Him and find their being in Him(1Cor. 1:16-17). The mind behind the creation is for us to develop into Christ. As seekers we hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness, presence, love and goodness in our lives and we long to be like Christ. Our faith has to allow for us to be imperfect. Our corrupted nature will one day, probably not in this lifetime, be no more. But for now, we have to accept our shortcomings and continue to persevere and live out our faith as if we are certain of what will be one day. The fact that we have things to persevere through means that we are becoming like Christ! No one perseveres through good, easy, everything going right. Perseverance only happens through bad, hard, everything going wrong. Or…even just nothing happening. When James tells us to “consider it cause of great joy”, I don’t think he is telling us to act like were happy that our lives are falling apart or nothing seems to be happening. I think he is reminding us that hardship is the necessary passage that gets us to being more like Christ. He is reminding us not to give up and that the reward we seek is still ahead and we are on the right road even if it doesn’t feel like we are.
But he is to ask with faith, without doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind. 7 A man like that should not think that he will receive anything from the Lord, 8 since he is of two minds and inconsistent in everything he does.
James goes on to also remind us of what it looks like when we give up. It almost seems to me that we become this person who never really gets anywhere. We have moments where we feel full of faith, but then when it gets hard we quit. And if that pattern keeps repeating, we end up not ever trusting ourselves to follow through on anything.
A spark, fanned into a flame can set a whole forest ablaze and will be impossible to quench. Once water boils, the same flame that got it there is enough to keep it boiling. Perhaps what this passage is saying to me today is that God is working in my life even if it is barely perceptible or the spiritual disciplines I practice don’t seem to be working. Nothing seems to be changing. My prayers seem to affect nothing. But all I am called to do is persevere, God does and is doing the rest.
We all start in a place of false ideas and preconceived notions of what God is like and how we will work in our lives. It takes time for God our father to scourge away our misunderstandings of Him. He gently removes them and offers a clearer understanding for us to hold to. Scourging our American ideas that He will bless our lives with the rewards of consumerism and status. And in doing so, He reveals our true selves to us. Our created nature to love our neighbor and by doing so, love God. But we have to persevere through the letting go of our misconception of God. And that is really difficult. We often want to return to the comfort of trusting in ourselves and our ideas and taking it upon ourselves to get what we want.