This is from a commissioning sermon delivered to assistant pastors; I thought it perfectly fitted to  our current series, and a good word not only for those of us called to care for others, but for all of us who think of ourselves as Christ’s.

To begin with, you [as pastors] are called to be waiting companions. Companions in the long art of patience and waiting. The worst depression I ever suffered was brought on partly by a sense of guilt that I had moved my very musical family to Canada, only to find that we couldn’t afford music lessons for them, and couldn’t even afford a piano. I had never lived in a house without a piano, or gone many days without playing it myself, and my heart despaired at the thought that I had unwittingly cut my young children off from making music. Then, after about a year, in which one level of depression had led to another, a wise friend who was moving house phoned me up and said he was going to sell me his electronic organ. ‘I couldn’t afford it’, I said. ‘I’m going to sell it to you for One Dollar’, he replied. I drove round there and put it in the back of the station wagon that afternoon, solemnly writing him a cheque for One Dollar (I think he wanted to tell his children, ‘I sold the organ’). We installed the organ in the living room bay window, and I got out my old book of easy Bach pieces and found a chorale prelude almost at random, and played it through. ‘That was nice,’ said Maggie from the kitchen. ‘What’s it called?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and looked back to the start of the piece. There it was, the answer to my waiting, the answer given by a gentle companion at the right time. The chorale was called ‘God’s time is best’. And my then eight-year-old son, who started organ lessons that summer, was playing the organ last Friday night when I licensed the new vicar at Wolsingham.

God’s time is best; and all counselling involves enabling people to wait for that time, even if they wouldn’t call it that. But the difference in being a waiting companion within a Christian framework is that we know there is a God who does have a ‘time’.

This is a transcript of a sermon by Nouwen on patience. I read it several years ago, and I have never forgotten it.  I expect you will find it helpful, too. Perhaps Nouwen’s understanding of how fear impossibilizes waiting has been the most instructive for me. Here’s an excerpt:

In our particular historical situation, waiting is even more difficult because we are so fearful… Fearful people have a hard time waiting, because when we are afraid we want to get away from where we are. But if we cannot flee, we may fight instead. Many of our destructive acts come from the fear that something harmful will be done to us… People who live in a world of fear are more likely to make aggressive, hostile, destructive responses than people who are not so frightened. The more afraid we are, the harder waiting becomes.

There are others who, when they perceive their own imperfections, get angry against themselves ; and that, not with humility but with such impatience, as they were fain to become saints in a day.

Of these there are many who propose much, and make mighty resolutions, and, as they are not humble and are over-confident of themselves, the more resolutions they make, the deeper they fall and the angrier they get, being too impatient to wait until God shall give them sanctity at His own good pleasure ; which is also contrary to the aforesaid spiritual meekness, and cannot be radically cured save by the purga tion of the dark night…

From the renunciation of self-will springs patience; for none can be perfectly patient in all things save the man who has subjected his own will to the will of God, and also in all profitable and seemly things, to the will of all other men.

Patience is a peaceful endurance of all things that may befall a man either from God or from the creatures. Nothing can trouble the patient man; neither the loss of earthly goods, of friends and kinsmen, nor sickness, nor disgrace, nor life, nor death, nor purgatory, nor devil, nor hell. For he has abandoned himself in perfect charity to the will of God, and as he is not burdened by mortal sin, everything that God imposes on him, in time and in eternity, is light to him.

By this patience a man is also adorned and armed against peevishness and sudden wrath, and impatience in suffering; which often stir a man from within and from without, and lay him open to many temptations.

And so, beloved brethren, after the benefits of patience and the evils of impatience have been carefully weighed, let us observe fully and maintain the patience through which we abide in Christ and with Christ are able to come to God.

That patience, rich and manifold, is not confined within a narrow compass or restrained by bounds of small extent. The virtue of patience extends widely and its wealth and abundance proceed from a source that has indeed a single name, but with its full-flowing streams it is diffused through many glorious courses, and nothing in our actions can avail towards the full realization of merit which does not take the power for its accomplishment from that source. It is patience that both commends us to God and saves us for God.

It is that same patience which tempers anger, bridles the tongue, governs the mind, guards peace, rules discipline, breaks the onslaught of lust, suppresses the violence of pride, extinguishes the fire of dissension, restrains the power of the wealthy, renews the endurance of the poor in bearing their lot, guards the blessed integrity of virgins, the difficult chastity of widows, and the indivisible love of husbands and wives. It makes men humble in prosperity, brave in adversity, meek in the face of injuries and insults. It teaches us to pardon our offenders quickly; if you yourself should offend, it teaches you to ask pardon often and with perseverance. It vanquishes temptations, sustains persecutions, endures sufferings and martyrdoms to the end. It is this patience which strongly fortifies the foundations of our faith.

It is this patience which sublimely promotes the growth of hope. It directs our action, so that we can keep to the way of Christ while we make progress because of His forbearance. It ensures our perseverance as sons of God while we imitate the patience of the Father.