Patience
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
John 5: 2-9
Bear Fruit with Patience
It’s hard to imagine the suffering of a man who sat, paralyzed, for 38 years within a stone’s throw of healing. For 38 years, people walked past him, lowering themselves or their friends and family members into the pool, but no one helped this man. For 38 years he watched God miraculously heal others but was not himself healed.
In the end, his waiting, his patience, would bloom into the beautiful gospel story we read even 2,000 years later.
What may have seemed like a hopeless situation was, in fact, used to illuminate the glory of God for millions of others.
This unnamed, paralyzed man bore fruit for the Lord by his patience.
Even when we find ourselves in hopeless-seeming situations, we can trust in the Lord’s goodness. He can resurrect even the bleakest of circumstances…though he may not do it on our timeline. Similarly, the ancient olive tree, abundant in the Holy Land, takes years and years of growth and patient labor before it begins to bear fruit.
As God’s people, we are called to fruitfulness. So often, though, it seems that fruitfulness is a long way off. But even when it seems that the Lord is nowhere in sight, we can trust that God is at work tending, watering, and nourishing the life he knows will bear the holy fruit of love, peace, joy, and faith.
“Think of yourself as a seed patiently wintering in the earth; waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking.”
— C.S. Lewis
Prayer for Patience
Merciful God,
Help me to remember you always. In times of frustration, sadness, waiting, and uncertainty, give me strength to bear all things in the knowledge of your unending love and goodness towards me. Just as you have infinite patience with me, as I stumble towards you, help me to grow in your image, becoming more like you in forbearance, serenity, and peace.
Whatever you are working out in my life, Lord, help me to welcome your will. However long it takes, help me to wait for you, like the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda. Help me to unwearyingly look for your coming—when all things shall be made well.
Amen
