Stop Light Patience

Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year A
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 … Imagine … You’re in the car, driving through town – maybe on the way to the grocery store, or to Church, or to pick up the kids at school. Just as you approach a stoplight at a busy intersection, the light turns yellow, and then red. You stop – you’re the first car in line – and you wait. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 … You’re mind is rushing through all the things you need to do – the places you need to get to, right now, and it’s raining, and you’re already late. 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 … Maybe the light’s not working right – there aren’t any cars coming, maybe I should just drive through and hope the police aren’t around. 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75 … by this time, your patience expired long ago, but, finally, the light turns green. And just as you pull away from the intersection, the next stoplight turns yellow, and then red, and you stop, again. 1, 2, 3, 4 …

Patience. Most of us want it, but very few of us have it. It’s a virtue, they say, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. St. James talks about patience today – “be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.” And it’s not just about waiting at a red light. We look for patience when awaiting results from a medical test, or for college application results. We seek patience during holiday gatherings with those family members we don’t quite get along with. But we Christians seem to especially need patience when it comes to God – it seems that God never works on our time. We pray for wisdom to know how best to love our children, or our parents. We pray for guidance on what direction to take our life. We pray for the heart to forgive past hurts. And all too often, we want those things quicker than they come. The patience to live on God’s time seems nearly impossible.

Patience really is all about trust, and trusting that God will take care of us. It doesn’t come naturally, it is a gift – God’s gift to us to remind us that he is in charge, that he knows what is best for us. In calling us to have patience, God wants to teach us to depend on him, and not on ourselves or others. As with many of the Christian virtues, learning patience must start with something else – we must start by having faith in God, faith that God is guiding our lives, that he really does know what is best for us. Impatience comes from wanting to be in control. If we can realize that God is in control, then we may be able to step back and wait patiently for whatever will come, because we know that God will not lead us on the wrong path. But patience also takes practice – we can’t expect to have the patience of Job right away. It takes regular practice, especially in the little things, and regular prayer. If we work at it, we might even be able to turn times of impatience into opportunities of grace – like using the time spent stopped at a red light to say a prayer, or using the time spent waiting in a doctor’s office to read a good book. Patience takes practice and it takes prayer – it’s not easy. And today, as we wait for a winter storm to pass through, as we wait for Christmas to arrive, we seek patience, because nothing we can do can make time speed up; nothing we can do can make the red light change more quickly; nothing we can do can really make the world revolve around us.