I don’t normally choose a theme word for years or seasons of my life. That may be because I do not sit quietly long enough to do it. Yet, as I reflect on 2019, one word that I can see consistently as a theme of my life has been “patience.” Not primarily that I need to be patient, but that God is patient. This blog won’t take long to read, so stick with me for a moment. I want you to consider Christmas as the story of God’s patience.
Christmas is about how God shows up to save. Have you ever thought about the way in which He does that? God spends thousands of years with a people— Israel. Slow. Patient. God speaks to generation after generation. Slow. Patient. God gives promise after promise. Slow. Patient. God leads them through hardship and discipline. Slow. Patient. God even goes seemingly silent for roughly 400 years. Slow. Patient. Then God shows up, personally, to save. How does He do it? Through a nine-month process of waiting for pregnant virgin to give birth. What does Christmas tell us about God? God is slow. God is patient.
God is delivered into the world like every other baby.
God becomes a refugee.
God learns how to walk.
God learns how to talk.
God learns how to do family road trips (talk about patience).
God goes to school.
God obeys His mother.
God works with His father.
God goes through puberty.
God has friends who just don’t get it.
God subjects himself to the whole human experience.
God subjects Himself to waiting, slowness, and patience.
If there’s anything I know about being human, it’s that most things happen a lot slower than I want. There’s always a process, and in many ways Christmas is the story about God going through the process. It’s about a God who is slow and patient. If I were God— and you should all be thankful I am not— I would show up rollin in on Tesla and get the show on the road. God does not do things the way I would, and maybe that’s for the best. He is slow. He is patient.
When God shows up to save, God doesn’t speed things up. He doesn’t save quickly. He doesn’t make things happen instantaneously. God meets people where they’re at. God goes at human speed. Actually, He goes a lot slower than most of us. Maybe God in flesh is showing us what human speed should really be like. God is patient. God takes His time. Christmas is about God showing up to save, and it should remind us that He does not save in a rush or in a hurry. He does not go quickly with the human heart, He does not go quickly with the world’s problems, He does not go quickly with our own situations. God does show up and act, He just works things out and together thoughtfully, methodically, purposefully, and slowly. The Apostle Paul explains it in a conversation with a friend saying, “ Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life.” The Apostle Peter Peter experienced firsthand God’s patience and wrote, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
You and I may count God as being slow, but from God’s perspective He is not slow at all. Maybe God isn’t as slow as I suppose, but maybe I move too quickly, perhaps to avoid the discomfort of slowness. God is so very patient. God is meticulous. God is working on all the details that I am not and will likely never be aware of. What is Christmas but a story of God’s slowness and His patience? That’s what Advent is all about: waiting, but waiting in hope because of God’s character. Christmas shows that God’s slowness is not His inattention nor His inactivity, God’s slowness is not a lack of care or a lack of ability. God’s slowness is actually His modus operandi (Latin for mode of operation or habit of working).
Maybe God’s apparent slowness is actually His intentional patience working everything out better than I can. Maybe patience and slowness is the very posture and pace of faithfulness and love. It’s stable, thoughtful, long-suffering, consistent, not going anywhere. Doing what is best even if it takes a while. Doing what needs to be done even when it’s costly. It’s finishing what is started. That is how God worked in human history 2,000 years ago, that’s still how He works in our lives today, and I don’t think He’s in a rush to change how He does things.