July 8, 2012
The First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.
A young woman’s car stalled at a traffic light. She tried to get it started, but nothing would happen. The light turned green, and there she sat, angry and embarrassed, holding up traffic. The car behind her could have easily gone around her, but instead the driver added to her anger by laying on his horn. Such behavior is standard for drivers in the greater Boston metro area.
After another desperate attempt to get the car started, she got out and walked back to the honker. The man rolled down his window in surprise.
“Tell you what,” she said, “You go start my car, and I’ll set back here and honk the horn for you.”
We live in an impatient world. A world where I want it my way, right away; I want what I want and I want it now. With each passing day, it appears the world is moving faster than ever before. Like little ants marching, we are always going and going; we’re on the move traveling in all directions at once. It’s a frantic, frenzied pace we run full of angst and anxiety with little time for waiting or practicing patience. How often have we prayed for patience asking, “O Lord, give me patience…and give it to me right now.”
No matter how fast we move or how fast our technology evolves, we still find ourselves needing to exercise patience. In the car, we find ourselves patiently waiting for the light to change. You buy something that needs to be assembled, and the instructions don't make sense. You're out on a golf course and you hit a straight drive; but when you get to where it ought to be lying, it's not there. You toss 16 socks into the clothes dryer and you get only 15 back. We patiently wait for the plumber, the electrician, or the cable guy to come to our home on their scheduled day anytime between 8:30am and 5pm. We patiently wait for the person ahead of us in the 15-item express line at the supermarket. This person puts 19 items on the belt, chats with the checkout clerk, fishes for her checkbook only after everything has been rung up and then wants to review the bill. We patiently wait for an all-important package to arrive by tracking its progress on-line. We patiently wait to ride the latest amusement park ride at Six Flags or Disney World. We run and hurry from one ride to the next to wait one hour in line for a two minute ride. It’s a life of hurry up and wait!
We need patience in order to manage annoyances and the low-level anger that accompanies them. Good things happen in their proper time. Good things happen according to God's timetable, not ours.
And with all the waiting we do, you would think that we would be experts. You would think we would have learned and mastered the fruit of the spirit we call patience.
In today’s text, King David is patiently waiting; not for the light to change or for the cable guy to fix the line or to ride The Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast at Six Flags. King David is waiting to officially be the king of Israel.
This text is the third and last announcement of David's anointing as king. It is the last of a three-stage rise to power. The first stage came with Samuel's anointing of David, prior to his victory over Goliath (1 Samuel 16:13). But Saul was still alive, so David was a king-in-waiting, a role he would play for some time, and with considerable patience. The second "announcement" (2 Samuel 2:4) comes following the anointing by the leaders of the "house of Judah." The third announcement comes here, in today's text, where we have the final announcement: David is anointed king by the "elders of Israel" and now he represents all the tribes of the United Kingdom. He had been king of Judah for seven years; he would continue as king of the United Kingdom for another 33 years. "And he became more and more powerful, because the LORD God Almighty was with him" (v. 10, NIV).
What strikes me about David's rise to be king is the frustrating process before the promise of kingship was fully realized. David was already anointed by the last and highly revered judge of Israel, Samuel, he spared the life of the king upon whose throne he was to sit and he showed great kindness toward the house of Saul.
I think perhaps David knew what The American humorist Arnold H. Glasow once said, “The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.” Pastor Douglas Rumford says, “Full grown oak trees are not produced in three years; neither are servants of God.”
David refused to force the blessing, refused to help God with the details. Instead, he waited; he waited for the promise to become reality, and was willing to receive the blessing in stages. No doubt, this had practical advantages as well. Nevertheless, it is a lesson for us.
Patience will be rewarded. Good things happen according to God's timetable, not ours.
But I want it now! Why won’t it work the way I want it to work? Pastor and professor Eugene Peterson talks about patience this way, “The person who looks for quick results in the seed planting of well-doing will be disappointed. If I want potatoes for dinner tomorrow, it will do me little good to plant them in my garden tonight. There are long stretches of darkness and invisibility and silence that separate planting and reaping.”
In the 2007 film “Evan Almighty”, God, disguised as a waiter, tells Evan’s wife, “When someone prays for patience, does God give them patience or does God given them the opportunity to be patient?”
A young father became noticeably more patient with people after a little girl came into their home who was seriously mentally retarded and physically handicapped. The doctors told the father and mother that she would be with them for only a few years. She lived to be 6 years old. In those brief years as he suffered with her, she worked her way into his heart and life to an unusual degree. As he reached out in tenderness to her, his heart became more and more tender toward everyone, particularly toward those who suffered. He may not have been conscious of the change that took place in his life, but his family and friends were definitely aware of it. Needless to say, patience comes only to those who react wisely or rightly to suffering.[1]
David’s rise to power as king was not his doing or the work of political insiders. His rise is God’s doing. David becomes greater and greater because he knows that God has been with him every step of the way. David exercises great patience knowing that God is with him and in control. David knows his role as the king of Israel is as a shepherd, a “good shepherd”. His rise is from as a shepherd boy to a shepherd king. As the shepherd king, his primary requirement is to remember that the shepherd exists for the sake of the sheep and their well-being.
What we have here is a whole new look of what power and governing is all about. Such a model requires the shepherd leader to exercise great patience knowing that God is the one in control.
This model is demonstrated most vividly in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the good shepherd whose death is interpreted as a complete sacrifice of the shepherd for the sheep. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).
Patience will be rewarded. Good things happen according to God's timetable, not ours. Amen.
[1] T.B. Maston, “Patience,” Fellowship
of Christian Athletes Web Site, Fca.org. Retrieved April 5, 2004.
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