Week 4 devotional
Mike Geide
Last week we spoke on Trust and the story of Rebel, a 5th grade running guide, helping to guide Paul, a 10th grader, in cross country. Think how much patience this took for both kids to learn to run together in this manner. The theme for this week’s run is Patience. We often mistakenly confuse patience with simply “waiting” or “doing nothing” … it is true that one can wait patiently, but it is equally true that one can wait impatiently … so what is patience. From the Catechism, it is a form of the moral virtue of Fortitude (something we spoke on during week 2); patience means “to bear it" … bearing difficulties without complaint; bearing the evils caused by others without resentment or worse: countering with hatred or other evil. Patience comes from Latin roots meaning suffering and endurance. In other words, patience is so much more than “waiting” and is most certainly not “doing nothing” … when we are patient we have decided to endure, suffer, and “bear it.”
Pope Francis has a number of recent homilies, including throughout this past year’s Holy Week, emphasizing the need for greater patience in the world … in everyday life, amongst Christians, amongst politicians and world leaders. With patience, the world would be a different place … a place of love and respect for one another. The Pope said, "There is no better witness to the love of Christ than meeting a patient Christian.”
We as humans are an impatient breed – we gravitate toward the quick win, instant gratification, and we show no patience for things that are different or counter to our beliefs. Sure we can and do evangelize (spreading the Word and sharing our Faith), but that does not mean to demean, discriminate, disenfranchise, or act un-Christ-like or immorally against anyone who believes something different. In his catechesis, the Pope said that the virtue of patience is an "essential vitamin" needed to combat the human instinct to "become impatient and respond to evil with evil."
For those who have seen The Chosen series, there is a reoccurring word that Jesus says to his impatient Apostles: “Soon” … meaning that things will happen when God is meant for them to happen. In a self-fulfilling way, Jonathan Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus took 20 years to get his big break in Hollywood. But God is not operating on a single life-time scale that will always make sense to us. For example, Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead, yet Christianity didn’t become the official Religion of Rome until 347 years later and we’re still pondering His effects 2000 years later. Throughout history there are plenty of Saints, scientists, artists, philosophers, and others whom we say the phrase, “they were before their time” … or their words & deeds “stood the test of time” or continue to be relevant and inspirational today. It is like that when we do God’s will … it is something that has lasting ripple effects versus just some short-term memory or short-lived pleasure response in your brain.
In the book “To Heaven and Back”, Dr. Mary Neal describes her encounter with Jesus when she “drowned” and was “dead” for 30 minutes during a kayaking accident … she said she was shown her deeds on Earth and how they impacted others 5, 10, 100 degrees out like a “butterfly effect.” She described it two visual ways: (1) an action being like a pebble tossed into a pond and the ripples that emanate out across the water; and (2) our lives being like a single thread in an infinite tapestry … our thread interacts with others threads at various points … causing other threads to shift in the weave … and the collections of weaves in the tapestry look different depending on if you are looking up close or from a distance.
Even though we may do the “next right thing”, the result or out-come may not look like we expected or wanted. This can lead to disappointment or stumbling blocks within our lives … where we may say to ourselves, “I did everything God wanted, but things are still the same” or “XYZ didn’t happen” or any other conditions that we put on our actions. But if doing the right thing always meant that we would receive some immediate out-come that we desired, this would diminish acting virtuously to just being transactional: “if I do this, I will get that.” That would require little/no Faith or trust, and it would essentially void the underlying essence of virtues like charity, kindness, forgiveness, loyalty, honesty. Imagine giving a sizeable donation to a charity only because you want your name posted on their website; or only being kind to someone because you want to be invited to their party; or are doing something kind but videoing it for social-media likes… as Jesus says, those actions have already received their reward in this world … acts of true love will be rewarded by the Father in the next world.
Unfortunately, it is so human nature to have a transactional mindset … how do we overcome this mindset … we must do the right thing out of love … love for God and by extension love for each other. Jesus gave us two commandments: to love God and to love your neighbor. So the next right thing will always be a thing that is done authentically out of love … and as 1 COR states, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” So, the “next right thing” involves loving actions that are patient and not self-seeking.
On your run today, ponder the things that you do that are transactional versus those things that you do with authenticity out of love. How are your actions toward those who are different or do not share the same beliefs as you. Ponder your actions being like pebbles tossed into a pond or your life being like a thread in a tapestry… Ask Jesus to help you with aspects of your life that you need patience … don’t just “wait for it”, offer it up to Jesus and “bear it!”
Julie Scott
Love the Mary Neal reference:)
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