Patience

Jacques Derrida in an interview said that people by nature are messianic. I think he meant (this is funny: I am interpreting Derrida, or should I say, deconstructing?) that all people live in expectation of something. All of us are looking forward to something happening and live in light of that hope, or fear. Christians, are perhaps the most messianic of all people. Arguably, promises of things to come outnumber things that are already in our possession. Christianity is a faith and we are the faithful. We live by faith that God’s promises will come true. That sort of faith is what God credits to us as righteousness. We are people who have been commissioned to wait. Our decision to wait and trust that God will do what He promised is the defining factor in our lives. Of course, there are many promises that have already come true – most notably, Jesus was born, died and rose from the dead. Those events we no longer expect. However, they contain in themselves promises of things not yet present, or, at least, not to the fullest extent. For example, Jesus’ birth contains a promise of our union with God and an invitation into the divine life of the Trinity. Jesus’ death contains a promise of victory over the Devil and his final judgment, while Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of many resurrections to come, as Paul writes. So, our faith may be likened to a pregnancy. The baby has been conceived and is alive with all her potential. However, we are still waiting for the birth. And as any woman who has been pregnant, or her husband, will tell you, patience is a supreme virtue during pregnancy.
Let’s see how this idea of the messianic nature of our faith affects different spheres of life. On a cosmic scale, we are expecting restoration of all things to God, the Creator. We long for our King to return in glory to reward the faithful and vindicate the oppressed. Socially, we relate to people who are not yet mature. We patiently wait for them to grow up, as it were. Of course, we ourselves require others to be patient as well. So, human interaction is kids talking to kids.
Our spiritual experience is no different. We expect the Holy Spirit to show up and change us. We wait for God to reveal His will to us. Realizing that it is God who always makes the first step involves a lot of waiting.
This life of expectancy warrants the conclusion that patience is one of the supreme virtues of the Christian. We may be called the patient as much as we are called the faithful.