Patience is a Virtue

When I was 4 years old, I stepped out onto the soccer field for the very first time. My hair was freshly combed to the side with my mother’s spit, and my shorts – which looked more like pants – were pulled up to my chin to prevent a tripping hazard. I didn’t know what to expect; I didn’t know what to do or which direction to go. I just stood there and looked around. I looked at all the grass, I looked at the parents lined on both sides of the field, yelling and screaming and pointing and swearing. I looked at the ball and all the players swarmed around it, and I knew that I was hooked. This was my game. This was my field.

To this day, there is something about a soccer field that just gets me going. When I step out there, laces tightened, legs stretched, shorts still pulled up high, I am ready to do some serious butt kicking. I am like King Leonidas without the abs. I mean with the abs. I am like King Leonidas with the abs, without the leather underwear.

I yell crazy things too. “Give me the ball!” “Let’s go!” “Hey buddy, you got yourself a pencil and paper? Cause you ‘bout to take some notes!” I get hyped up on an all natural, three red bull kick and I want to score. I want to win. I want to do a victory dance.

Of course, all the wanting and talking rarely translates to anything worth writing home (or notes) about. I start making passes that don’t need to be passed, juking players, that don’t need to be juked. I don’t allow the game to come to me, I take myself to the game. I force the issue. And then I fail. My passes get intercepted, the ball gets taken away, the other guy hands me his pencil and paper. I end up standing alone, watching the game go by, upset with myself because I forgot to take one thing out on the field with me: patience.

The funny thing is, I’m actually a fairly good soccer player. I’m not the best; I’m no David Beckham or Christiano Ronaldo, I might not even be as good as this guy, but I know how to play the game. If I stay patient and wait for the game to come to me, for the holes to open up and the opportunities to present themselves, I usually play very well. I just have to wait for my time to shine. Until then I have to calm the anxiety and wait.

Just wait. Be patient.

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The saying “patience is a virtue” is true; unfortunately it’s a virtue that has yet to come knocking on my door. I don’t know patience, we haven’t met, and so I’m stuck working with what I know: restlessness. It’s not just on the soccer field. It’s at work, at play, at home, in life. Anytime an idea comes to the forefront of my mind I want it to happen right away, by supper if possible. I don’t like timelines and outlines. I don’t like goal setting and prioritizing. I like accomplishing. Unfortunately that’s not how life works. You have to wait, you have to be patient. You have to wait for the door to open, even if it’s something you feel called to do.

Moses showed us what not to do many moons ago. Yes, Moses, the guy with the magical staff that turns into a snake and wins battles. The guy who faces Pharaoh straight on and leads the Israelites out of Egypt; but I’m not talking Exodus, I’m talking murder.

Personally, I think Moses had this sense that he would free the Israelites way before he actually did. Maybe it was a gut feeling, a calling from God, a sense he was meant to do something bigger. So he set out to do it. He sees an Egyptian violently assaulting his kinsman and decides it was time, time to free his people. He was just following his own instincts, doing what he felt he was called to do, but the door wasn’t open. It wasn’t his time. So what happens? He ends up a murderer, in exile for 40 years.

Moses wasn’t patient. If he was, maybe the burning bush would have come before he was 80. Or maybe not, I don’t know, I’m no theologian. What I do know is the lesson is learned. Sometimes it’s best to just be patient. Sometimes it’s best to just sit back and wait and for those open doors. Sometimes it’s best to just pull up our shorts and watch the game.

by Lee Hoover | 2 comments | Self Development

Basic Values

I took a basic values inventory for class tonight and guess what? I am task oriented and achievement focused. Surprise, Surprise.

Or not.

It’s not a stretch to say that tasks have consumed my entire adult life. In my work and at home I will often lose myself in a task, so much so that I will avoid getting up for anything – even food – until I complete what’s in front of me. Last night I didn’t eat until 9pm. Why? I had to finish what I was doing. It’s 9 right now and I still haven’t eaten. It’s bad, and it’s been worse. Just ask my wife…if it weren’t for her I would go many nights without food.

Finishing something translates into achieving something so I’m not surprised that was a value as well. One of the questions in the analysis asked whether I was more concerned with accomplishment than holding a certain position or title. Easy. I will always take an achievement over a title or position and sometimes am frustrated with those who worry about titles more so than getting the job done.

But there’s where I learned something. Not that achievement and task orientation are things I value highly, but that they are just…values.

Values are personal, and perhaps more importantly, variable. Not everybody shares the same values and is it not better for me to come to this realization than to assume my values are common laws that everyone should follow? I am not sure why that is suddenly clear, but in taking the analysis I knew that each person would have different results. I also knew that my results reflected values that are important to me, and if they are important to me than they are important to others. Perhaps understanding that is the first step to full acceptance of others as they are, even if the step is a small one. At least it’s in the right direction.

by Lee Hoover | 2 comments | Self Development

Jesus Christ – Son of God or Ethics Teacher

People often argue that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, rather he was a great teacher – a man from whom we could all learn.

I never liked that argument, and a paragraph out of A Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology does a good job of explaining why:

If Jesus was not and is not the Son of God, insists (John Gresham) Machen, then he is the very reverse of a reliable teacher of ethics. For Jesus claimed to be divine; he claimed to have authority over men; he claimed to do that which only God can do – forgive sins; he claimed to be the Messiah, foretelling that he would return on the clouds of heaven; he asserted that he was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. If Jesus were only a man and claimed these things, he cannot be our example, for he was either a madman or a charlatan.

Word.

by Lee Hoover | 5 comments | Christianity

Individualism

“The heresy of individualism: thinking oneself a completely self-sufficient unit and asserting this imaginary ‘unity’ against all others. The affirmation of the self as simply ‘not the other.’ But when you seek to affirm your unity by denying that you have anything to do with anyone else, by negating everyone else in the universe until you come down to you: what is there left to affirm? Even if there were something to affirm, you would have no breath left with which to affirm it. The true way is just the opposite: the more I am able to affirm others, to say ‘yes’ to them in myself, by discovering them in myself and myself in them, the more real I am. I am fully real if my own heart says yes to everyone.“ Thomas Merton

In my Air Force career I have been fortunate to visit more than 30 countries. I have played soccer with the Turkish, sung Karaoke with the Japanese, and drunk Maté with the Uruguayans. If there is one thing I have learned from interacting with people from all over the world, it is this: we are all the same. Each of us desires companionship, love, respect, and acceptance. Most importantly, each of us is a child of God.

After reading the above Merton quote I was reminded of how much alike we really are. Individualism, and even more so ethnocentrism, is something that tears at the heart until it is unable to love anything but what is close and familiar. It is what fuels racism and violence…and ignorance. In the religious sense, individualism is a blindfold to truth and understanding, and unless we take it off we can never see what God has intended for us to learn and understand: that we are all the same, and that we all came from the same place: the hands of God.

So what then should our response be? I do not think it can be anything but what God has commanded us to do from the beginning. Love. Love your neighbor; love your enemy. Love those who look different; love those who worship different. I truly believe that a response of true love towards God’s creation would alleviate much of the individualism and ethnocentrism in society. It does not need to happen in the next blink of my eyes, but it can happen over time.

I suppose the trick would be to start small. We begin by loving our neighbor, the atheist. We begin by loving our co-worker, the Jew, or our classmate, the Muslim. We love them not because we understand them, but because they are God’s creation.

And then we listen. We listen to their stories; we listen to their beliefs. We listen for what we share rather than what we do not understand. I think we would be surprised by what we would learn if we listened. If we listen and love, as God loves, we can see that we come from the same place, and need the same thing to survive.

by Lee Hoover | 2 comments | Christianity

The Call to Discipleship

Take a look in the gospels and you’ll see a miraculous story. No, not that one. The other one. The story of twelve men who gave up everything to follow Jesus into the unknown, who suffered alongside Him, and who carried on His message after He ascended into heaven.

The twelve, as we so call them, were the first. They followed, they suffered, they learned. And they did it all to be next to the one they called The Messiah. The story of their lives is remarkable, comforting, and encouraging, but it also leads me to ask a number of questions of myself.

They Followed

To become a disciple of Jesus Christ meant to put the nets and the tax books down and follow him. Jesus was the leader, the King of the Jews, and he was walking down a newly created path; all they had to do was follow, learn, and be wholly committed to him and his teaching. Following Jesus opened new doors for the disciples. It allowed them to “escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke of Jesus Christ.” ((The Cost of Discipleship, Deitrich Bonhoeffer)) It allowed them to follow the path to redemption and to become a part of the family of God. ((Mk 3:34-35 “Then he looked at those around him and said, “Look, these are my mother and brothers. Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”)) It also allowed them to show their remarkable strength and their desire to be one with God. They didn’t hold on to anything from their past. They didn’t yearn for this or wish for that, they didn’t need it. “They left everything and followed Jesus.” ((Luke 5:11))

What have I put down?

They Suffered

When the disciples chose to follow Jesus Christ, they chose to begin a life of suffering that would last until their own deaths many years later. They knew they would have to drink from the “bitter cup” and be baptized with the “baptism of suffering,” ((Mk 10:39)) but they were prepared. They were prepared to leave their houses and family, to deny themselves, to take up their cross, and to even lose their lives for Christ’s sake. ((Mt 10:37-38)) The cost of discipleship was and still is high. But what you earn in return is something money or comfort cannot buy. It is a treasure hidden in the field. “It is the Kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble.” ((The Cost of Discipleship, Deitrich Bonhoeffer))

Have I suffered? Am I willing to?

They Learned

In the three years spent with Jesus Christ the disciples spent much of their time learning. During the popular Sermon on the Mount – and throughout the entirety of the gospels – the disciples “gathered around him,” listening and memorizing his words. ((Mt 5:1)) Why? Because soon they would be left alone to finish what had started. Jesus was preparing the disciples to “go and make disciples of all the nations.” ((Mt 28:19)) They would personify the words of Paul before he had the chance to write them. “And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.” ((2 Cor 5:18))

Am I prepared? Am I ready and willing to finish the job?

The disciples were. They were more than ready. They followed him, suffered with him, learned from him, and then watched as “the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly.” ((Acts 6:7))

Can I follow in their footsteps?

Can you?

by Lee Hoover | one comment | Christianity