Don’t be impatient for the Lord to act! Keep traveling steadily along his pathway and in due season he will honor you with every blessing. [Psalm 37:34a (TLB)]
And let us not get tired of doing what is right, for after a while we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t get discouraged and give up. [Galatians 6:9 (TLB)]
In the familiar Aesop’s fable of “The Tortoise and the Hare,” the over-confident hare takes a nap midway through the course while the tortoise, plodding steadily along, passes him and wins the race. I’ve always seen the moral of the story to be “slow but sure wins the race” with an added warning to beware of over-confidence. I never thought about how the tortoise must have felt as he trudged along so slowly. Did he ever measure his pace and progress against the hare’s? Did he think he could even finish the course let alone win it? Did he ever entertain thoughts of quitting? If I’d been the tortoise in Aesop’s story, I’m afraid I might have given up in despair long before discovering the sleeping hare along the road!
We recently visited a nature preserve that is home to several gopher tortoises. After comparing them with the rabbits in our neighborhood, given a choice, I’d prefer to move like the rabbit. Sometimes, however, life moves at the tortoise’s pace. Progress seems to come in fractions of an inch instead of feet and it’s easy to get discouraged.
Lord, thank you for the course you’ve laid out for us. Help us accept that sometimes progress is painstakingly slow. Give us endurance and patience so we can travel steadily (and joyfully) along the path you’ve given us.
The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it. [Ellen Glasgow]
Recently, our pastor asked us to write down both a prayer concern and a joy that anonymously could be shared with the congregation. Once compiled on a sheet of paper, the list was made available to anyone who wanted to offer those worries, needs and joys to God in prayer. As expected, most of the joys had to do with family, friends, health, and God’s love and forgiveness. Most of the concerns also were what we’d expect: health and the health of loved ones, finances, government, family turmoil, and children. At our Florida church, we start our weekly Bible study with prayer requests and praise reports and the list from our northern church was remarkably similar with one glaring exception. One person wrote, “I’m always afraid.”
I recently happened upon a YouTube video about a goose and two police officers. A mother goose kept pecking at the window of a parked Cincinnati police car. When the officer opened the door, the goose led him over to one of her babies; it was tangled up in a string tied to a balloon. Concerned that mama goose would attack if he came close to the baby, the first officer stayed back. His partner was a woman and a mother; seeing the anguish of another mother, she went forward and carefully untangled the little gosling while its mama patiently watched and waited. Once free of the twine, the baby rejoined its siblings and the family swam off with their mother.
I have a friend who worries. Her husband says that even when she has nothing about which to worry, she worries about whatever next could go wrong long before it possibly can. He added that having a “designated worrier” has made his life much easier—while she worries, he can relax and enjoy himself! His comment made me remember a trip we took to the Cayman Islands nearly forty years ago. We were accompanied by a worrying friend.
For two years, I was part of a women’s ministry. One of its purposes was to host a web site for twelve Christian writers. We were a diverse multi-generational group and the site offered hyperlinks to our individual blogs. All were women who felt they’d been called by God to expand His kingdom through their writing. We regularly shared our prayer concerns with one another and a month rarely passed without one or more women requesting prayers for their writing or asking for divine inspiration. Sadly, the ministry disbanded this past year, in great part due to the lack of writing by most of the authors.
Our pastor once told the story of a recently married parishioner. After a long day of travel, he and his new wife finally arrived at their hotel. The groom hoisted the bride in his arms and opened the door to their deluxe suite. It had a beautiful view of the beach, a small kitchenette, and an elaborate entertainment system. What it didn’t appear to have was a bed! They finally checked the sofa and discovered it was a hide-a-bed. They were exhausted and, deciding it was too late to complain, the newlyweds unfolded the bed and settled in. Like most hide-a-beds, this one had a thin mattress and two supporting bars that seemed to dig into whatever part of the body was downward. The couple tossed and turned and, needless to say, their honeymoon night did not meet their expectations.
Devotions of the Heart 