Ecclesiastes 7:8

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

This evening’s Bible passage is Ecclesiastes 7:8: “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”

We’ve been shut down now for more than eight weeks. Our patience may be wearing thin. It would be easier to cope if we had an end-date. Not so much a short-term loosening of precautions as a long-term date when an effective vaccine would be in place, COVID-19 would be under control, and we could realistically plan to travel again to visit family, friends, and even vacation spots by something other than online means. We’re not quite sure whether we’re running a mile race or an ultra-marathon. It would help us to be patient and to pace ourselves if only we knew. 

But then it wouldn’t be patience, or at least not what the Bible usually means by patience. The patience of someone who has carefully planned a course of action and now waits confidently for the desired result may be commendable, but it isn’t the kind of patience the Bible generally has in view. The Bible calls us to be patient when the outcome is uncertain, whether it’s a matter of tension between family members or co-workers, or an appeal for justice, or the effective end of COVID-19, or the timing of Christ’s return. “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,” but when will the good end come? We don’t know. Under such circumstances, the author of Ecclesiastes counsels patience rather than a pride that claims the right to know God’s precise timetable.

The Bible frequently encourages such patience. In his letter to the Colossians, for example, Paul writes: “May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy;giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:11-14).

Several things are worth noting here. First, this kind of patience isn’t something that we muster up by our own moral strength and willpower. It takes all the “power” of God’s “glorious might” to strengthen us with such patience. What may seem impossible to us is possible to God.

Secondly, along with patience, God gives us “joy.” Godly patience isn’t a gloomy, self-pitying thing; it’s a comfort and a joy in difficult circumstances. Love, joy, peace, and patience are all characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:32). The Spirit doesn’t pick and choose: he cultivates every aspect of the fruit in us: so, “patience with joy.” God delights to bear such fruit in us.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, in the midst of an uncertainty that requires our patience, we still enjoy the certainty of God’s glorious blessings in Christ. God has already “qualified [us] to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” God doesn’t ask us to wait patiently for these blessings to arrive at some unspecified time in the future. They’re not carrots to get us moving warily forward, they’re gifts already given and never to be taken away. We are already qualified, delivered, transferred, redeemed, and forgiven.

So, yes, the fact that we don’t know when or how COVID-19 will end makes it harder to be patient with the present shutdown. But even as we struggle with the uncertainty, we enjoy some greater certainties. Looking to the past, we know that we have forever been “delivered … from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” In the present, we can be sure that God’s power is daily at work in us, even or especially during the pandemic, to cultivate and strengthen our “patience with joy.” And, because of what God has already done for us in Christ and is now working in us through the power of his Holy Spirit, we can be certain of our future, final, and eternal end. We will forever “share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”

 Patience may be hard, but the end that we await is far better than the beginning.

Your brother in Christ,

Max