The Portrait of Patience

With this strength of patience Isaiah is sawn in two, and does not stop speaking about the Lord; Stephen is stoned, and prays that his enemies be forgiven. And happy too the man who met the whole violence of the devil by putting every kind of patience to work! The driving off of his cattle; the loss of that wealth of his in sheep; his children swept away in a single collapse; and at the last the agony of his own body turned into one continuous wound — none of it moved him off the patience and the faith he had pledged to the Lord. The devil hit him with everything he had, and hit him for nothing. [a]

For with all his sufferings the man was not dragged away from his reverence for God. He has been set up instead as an example to us and a witness: proof that patience can be carried all the way through, in spirit as well as in flesh, in mind as well as in body. So we are not to give way to damage done to our property, or to the loss of the people dearest to us, or even to afflictions of the body.

What a trophy-frame God set up against the devil in that one man! What a banner he raised over the enemy of his own glory, when at every bitter message the man let nothing out of his mouth but thanks to God — and rebuked his wife, worn out by then with troubles and pushing him toward crooked remedies! How God smiled; how the evil one was cut to pieces — while Job, with enormous calm, went on scraping the filthy discharge off his own sore, and playfully put the worms that crawled out of it back into the same hollows and feeding places of his eaten-away flesh.

And so, when every dart of temptation had blunted itself against the breastplate and shield of his patience, that working man of God’s victory not only got the soundness of his body back from God soon afterward, but held twice over what he had lost. If he had wanted his children given back as well, he could have been called father again; but he preferred to have them given back “on that day.” That joy — so completely safe, since it was in the Lord’s keeping — he put off. In the meantime he endured a bereavement he had chosen, so as not to live without some exercise of patience.

God, then, is a more than sufficient trustee for patience. If what you deposit with him is a wrong done to you, he is the Avenger; if a loss, he is the Restorer; if pain, he is the Healer; if death, he is the Reviver. What an honor is granted to Patience, that she should have God for her debtor! And not without reason. She keeps every one of his rulings; she has a hand in all his orders. She strengthens faith; she is the pilot of peace; she helps love along; she sets humility on its feet; she waits a long time for repentance; she puts her seal on confession; she governs the flesh and keeps the spirit safe; she bridles the tongue and holds back the hand; she tramples temptations underfoot and drives off scandals; she puts the crown on the deaths of witnesses; she comforts the poor and teaches the rich restraint; she does not strain the weak past their strength or wear out the strong; she is the believer’s delight and an invitation to the outsider; she recommends the slave to his master and the master to God; she is an ornament to a woman and the making of a man; she is loved in a child, praised in the young, looked up to in the old. She is beautiful in either sex, at every time of life. [i]

Come, now, and see whether we can sketch her face and her bearing. Her expression is calm and peaceful; her forehead clear, drawn into no wrinkle of sadness or of anger; her eyebrows evenly relaxed in a cheerful way; her eyes lowered in humility, not in misery; her mouth sealed with the honorable mark of silence; her color the color of people who have nothing to worry about and nothing to be guilty of. Her head moves often against the devil, and her laugh is a threat. Her clothing across the breast is white and closely fitted to her, neither puffed out nor disordered.

For Patience sits on the throne of that calmest and gentlest Spirit — the Spirit who is not found in the rolling of the whirlwind, nor in the leaden color of the cloud, but is soft and clear, open and plain, the one Elijah saw at his third try. Where God is, there is his foster-child too, and her name is Patience. When God’s Spirit comes down, Patience comes with him and cannot be parted from him. If we do not let her in along with the Spirit, will he stay with us for good? I doubt he would stay any longer at all. Without his companion and servant he would have to be cramped in every place and at every moment. Whatever blow his enemy landed, he would be unable to bear it alone, since he would be without the instrument for bearing it.

This is the rule, this the discipline, these the works of the patience that is heavenly and true — Christian patience, that is, and not the false and shameful thing that the nations of the earth call by the same name. For so that the devil might rival the Lord in this too, he has taught his own disciples a patience of his own, and taught it on more or less equal terms — except that the difference between evil and good is exactly as wide as the two of them are large. His is the patience that puts husbands up for sale for a dowry and teaches them to live off pimping, so that they end up under their wives’ power. It is the patience that with counterfeit affection goes through every labor of forced attentiveness in order to trap the childless. It is the patience that makes the belly’s slaves put up with insulting patronage, their freedom handed over to their throats. [q]

Careers of patience like that the nations know all about, and they snatch at a name of such goodness to hang it on filthy practices. They are patient with rivals, with the rich, with anyone who invites them to dinner; with God alone they are impatient. But their patience, and their leader’s, can look after itself — a patience that the fire underground is waiting for. Let us, for our part, love the patience of God, the patience of Christ. Let us pay him back the patience he paid down for us. Let us offer him the patience of the spirit and the patience of the flesh, believing as we do in the resurrection of flesh and spirit.