Ecclesiastes 7:8: “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.” Life is best lived with patience, and the Christian demands it. Patience paces us in every arena of life, allowing us the time, space, and energy to grow and develop. Patience is what sees a work to completion, as Solomon notes. The Romans had a saying, “Labor omni vincit.” Or work conquers all, but behind this is the patience to keep at that work till it succeeds. The Founding Fathers and pioneers who built the United States relied on patience to overcome numerous setbacks, hardships, and defeats. We may think of these as examples of determination, or drive, or true grit; and all of those surely played their part, but it is patience that enables them to do so. Patience is what brooks the insults, accepts the defeats, navigates the setbacks and the delays, and keeps the prideful temper in check. Patience is an exercise of humility in time. It is the result of recognizing that we are not sovereign, nor preeminent in anything. Patience is the subjection of self to providence, whether that providence is appreciated or not. The opposite of patience is not hyperactivity, but pride. The impatient does not say, “I must be moving,” but, “This is my time!” Patience does not breed inactivity. Patience is not sloth; it does work, but it works with awareness and purpose, and does not waste effort. Patience is willing to stop for a time, but only so that it can reengage at the opportune time.
Ecclesiastes 7:8 Meaning
This is why 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that love is patient. Love must be because the work of loving is not accomplished all at once. You love over a lifetime. For the same reason, walking with Christ requires patience, for it is a marathon, not a sprint. We could go on listing any number of activities that require patience, and we would find the list includes all the activities that make life really worth living.
How do we get patience? In an agrarian culture, the lulls between planting and harvest, the delays of weather, and the limited hours of sunlight teach patience. Working with livestock, or with young children, teaches patience of a different sort. Life used to provide many more obvious opportunities to learn patience, but advances in technology have given us more expectations of instant gratification.
We can banish the night to keep working around the clock, and we can send and receive messages in the blink of an eye. We can have a meal in minutes without ever leaving our car. It has become harder to learn patience even in an agrarian setting because in the wider world, patience is no longer a virtue; it is a leftover notion from an obsolete world. Today, we should not need to be patient, and if we are asked to be patient, it means there is a problem in the system.
The real problem is this: we were never meant to live this fast. We were never designed to have it all right now. We were created to wait. We were meant to arrive at a situation where all we could do was step back. We were meant to face the reality that things were not optimal. We were made to bow the knee to God and to wait for Him. Now here is our ultimate concern: if we cannot wait to finish the job, or to have our food, or to check out at the store, how are we going to manage when it really matters?
How will you wait to find the right pastor? How will we manage till the Lord opens the next door of opportunity? How will you wait for a spouse, or for a child? How will you endure the process of sanctification?
When the world gives us what we want when we want it, or at least tries to, we begin to think that everyone else ought to be doing the same. The Bible speaks directly against this calling for, you guessed it, patience with one another. See Ephesians 4:12 and Colossians 3:13:
- Ephesians 4:12: “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:”
- Colossians 3:13: “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”
No patience equals no lasting relationships, and no lasting relationships equals isolation. It takes time to get to know someone and to be known by someone. Unfortunately, some of that time involves frustration as baggage is brought out and unpacked on both sides. There is also the sin we all bring to the table that has to be confronted, and repented of, and forgiven.
Of course, there are also the trivial annoyances that are not sinful, but can tempt us to sin. If our expectations of others are that they will provide instant gratification, we will be disappointed. For example, AI offers an alluring alternative, but one without a soul.
There are serious concerns here, ranging from the future of human society to the avenues of evangelism. Genesis 2 makes it clear that we are made for intimacy first with God and then with our fellow human beings. Relationships are built into the fabric of our existence, and as pride and impatience push us further from the original design, things are bound to break. Look around, it is already happening.
A lack of patience sets us up to fail in personal development, at work, at leisure, and in relationships. We have a choice, not in how situations play out, but in how we respond to them. We can be impatient, or we can be patient.
We can seek instant gratification, or we can content ourselves to wait for gratification. We may not be able to regulate the rhythms of the world we live in, but we can set the tempo of the drum we march to. We can help our children by creating downtime, by denying them instant gratification, and by expecting them to persevere. We can do these things because we know the sovereign God who created us to live in time and in seasons. We can dare to be different, and all it takes is just a little patience.
No, it still will not be easy, but it will be easier.
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