Patience

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Psalm 27:14

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Romans 12:12

"But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." Romans 8:25

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9

“Jesus replied, ‘You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ John 13:7

Yesterday on a walk I noticed a bird perched on a branch, insect in beak. She was sitting there: not moving, not eating the insect, and not attempting to fly off.

And then I saw a dead bird on the ground, wings splayed, probably hit by a car.

Of course, the dead bird was likely a family member of the perched bird. I’m not sure if the bird on the branch was the parent and the dead bird a fledgling, but I felt sadness noticing the perched bird not able to move forward with any type of action.

In humans, grief affects us all differently. While Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief in her ground-breaking work, On Death and Dying, in 1969, we don’t all experience those stages in exactly the same way. In our current Wednesday morning bible study, we are studying the book Open the Door by Joyce Rupp, subtitled “A journey to the true self”. With the analogy of doors (closed, open, thresholds, etc.), Joyce explores how we can grow in our faith and spirituality. In one of the week’s sessions, she focuses on how “some doors open slowly”. In other words, don’t hurry the process of your spiritual growth along. Experience with patience the journey you’re meant to be on. Embrace the word “wait”. Grief is often one of those lessons in patience.

Prayer: Dear Lord, sometimes we want to hurry our spiritual maturity along. We want to skip over the “bad” parts, the difficulties, the struggles. Remind us that our journey with you is ever evolving, and is never done. Amen.

Donna Gustafson