Show Notes
In this episode, Pastor Derek Vreeland describes how nearly all wisdom can be summed up in patience. He shares personal experiences and reflections on the value of patience in getting older and in decision making. He also explores the concept of patience in the face of conflict and injustice, drawing insights from the teachings of Jesus and theologians like Miroslav Volf. The episode concludes with a call to embrace patience and kindness in daily life.
Books mentioned in this episode:
The End of Memory by Miroslav Volf
Scripture verses mentioned in this episode:
Mark 4:26-29
Romans 12:19-21
Matthew 5:38-42
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome to Peaceable and Kind, the podcast where we explore the transformation. Each week your host, Derek Vreeland, will delve into the stories, scriptures, and practical steps that help us embody these essential Christian virtues.
Derek Vreeland: Welcome back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your one-man host, Derek Vreeland. And I’d love to hear your feedback on the podcast so far. We’ve just got started. We’re a few episodes into this. I’ve heard from a few of you. But if you’re listening today, I’d love to hear your feedback. So hit me up on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. uh well I guess they call it X now, but I’m really resisting the name change. So if you are on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Hit me up there and let me know your thoughts. Let me know your thoughts on the podcast because I believe the peaceable and kind podcast can evolve. And my desire is to produce content that helps you. So I’d love to hear your feedback. Hit me up on social media and let me know what you think. Today, I want to talk about patience. Everyone’s favorite topic, patience. Particularly, I want to think about patience as the pathway to peace Do you think in songs? I do. Often when I hear a word, my brain instantly goes to some song from the past. And when I think of the word patience, I think of a Guns N’ Roses song. Do you know the one I’m talking about? You know, Guns N’ Roses, that rock band from the late nineteen hundreds Their song Patience was a different song for them. It was an acoustic song. It had Axl Rose whistling. It’s kind of a moody ballad Now, I’m not going to sing it, but the chorus is what is stuck in my head. Need a little patience. Yeah, just a little patience. Do you remember that song? Well, it’s what’s stuck in my head now, and it’s what’s stuck in my head anytime I think about patience. I am personally not a very patient person by nature. Anyone who knows me knows that Left to my own devices, I’m gonna get in a hurry. I like speed, I like efficiency, I like getting things done as quickly as possible. If I am on a four-lane road and I’m headed, let’s say I’m here in my hometown and I’m northbound on the Belt Highway, it’s a four-lane road. and I’m I’m headed towards a red light and there’s two lanes going northbound and I’m pulling up towards the red light and if I see three cars in the right lane one car in the left lane, my body will instinctively pull me into the left lane because I want to get through that red light as fast as possible. Now, I’m not saying this to brag at all. In fact, I’m confessing my sins to you I have lived most of my life in a hurry, very impatient. And I’m Learning slowly, I’m learning the value of slowing down and being patient, particularly at this stage of my life. I recognize I’m getting older. I recently turned 50 years old. The big 5-0. Which for me feels like a bit of a milestone. Turning 20 was no big deal. Turning 30 was no big deal. Turning 40 was kind of a big deal for me. Because I thought, okay, I’m gonna be 40, I’ve got to be a real adult here. And for me, turning 50 really was a bit of a watershed moment in my life. It caused me to think back on the previous 50 years and to think forward towards however many years I have left. And as I look towards the future, I really want to be a wise person. I want to be the kind of wise one in my church and in my family. and in my community that people can look to, that people can go to for advice. I don’t want to just get old. I want to be an aged sage Now I do recognize I am getting older. In turning 50, I went back to the eye doctor, and my eye doctor told me that I needed bifocals, but I told her I’m resisting that. although I’m now using reading glasses. But I don’t want to just get old. I want to grow into an aged kind of wisdom that can be a resource for other people. And so you cannot be wise without being patient. Indeed, nearly all wisdom can be summed up in patience. Isn’t that true? For me, a rushed decision is almost always an unwise decision, as I’ve reflected on the past, in decisions I’ve made both personally and professionally. When I have been slow and thoughtful and methodical in the decision making, those turned out to be better decisions. wiser decisions. But when I have just off the cuff made a quick decision particularly professionally, those turned out to be mistakes. E even recently I’m working with a group of men at our church and we’re working through a men’s ministry calendar and one of the guys in our group had asked me about going to a baseball game. He gave me two dates. I didn’t even think about it. I just said, take the first one. Let’s just let’s just go to the Let’s go to the game, the first of your two dates, let’s just book it, make it happen. Well, I didn’t think about all the time for promotion and collecting money and getting tickets and And so I had to apologize to him and said, you know what, I went I went a little quick there. I made a very rushed decision. We didn’t give ourselves enough lead time. for planning this uh men’s event or this baseball game. I apologize. Let’s go with the later date. I want to be a wise person, and so I am learning to be patient. And I’m convinced that almost all wisdom can indeed be summed up with the word patience. And patience is also the pathway to peace. A peaceable and kind life can’t be lived in a hurry And I understand that there are demands upon our schedules that often cause us to speed up, particularly with family life. I think of my stage of life when I had young kids and they were in sports and they had appointments and they had school activities and they had church activities and they had friend activities and sometimes the season of life that you are in can cause you to be sped up I think about my stage of life when I had young kids and they had school activities and church activities. They were doing things with their friends. It felt like we were always on the go. And I think social media has also sped up our lives a little bit because now we see all these events that are happening and people are posting pictures and sometimes I think, oh, I should be there, oh I should do that. And so we do need practices that cause us to slow down a bit, to reject that hurried pace of life. And we need to be patient. I think the reason that a good life and a peaceable life is a patient life is because God is not in a hurry. And isn’t that frustrating at times? Sometimes when I’m praying for something and God seems not to be answering, I get so frustrated. Like God You see the situation, I’m asking you to help. Why aren’t you doing something? In fact, in the Psalms in the Old Testament, there are plenty of prayers of lament. How long, O Lord? Prayers in the Psalms that say things like, God, are you asleep? Rouse yourself You can look throughout the Psalms and see times when people of God were frustrated that God wasn’t showing up and that God wasn’t acting quickly enough. I’ve been praying for a friend of mine for well over a year who’s been battling cancer and he’s gone through rounds of chemo and surgeries. He’s had. victories and setbacks and watching him and his family suffer is it’s heartbreaking. And there’s times when I’m praying for him. I’m like, God, why don’t you hurry up and heal this guy? But God doesn’t get in a hurry. God doesn’t operate according to our timeline The kingdom of God, that is God’s rule and reign over all things, doesn’t move as fast as we’d like. The kingdom parables that Jesus told are often comparing the kingdom of God to things like yeast rising or seed growing. For example, in Mark chapter 4, Jesus says, the kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground. and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow he does not know how the earth produces of itself First the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come The kingdom of God is how God is at work, and it very much is like a seed. Often I think of our prayers as seeds. When I’m praying and asking God to help, for example, my friend with cancer, I believe I’m planting a seed of faith. But when I pray and plant that seed, I’m leaving it with God, recognizing that God will answer in God’s own time. The kingdom of God grows slowly, but the goal of the kingdom is peace. So we need to calibrate our expectations around God’s timetable, not ours. God desires for our peace, God desires for human flourishing. But God is going to take God’s own time and do things in his own time. Now, peace in the face of conflict Peace in the face of injustice also requires patience. There are often quick More expedient ways to get to peace, but that is not the way the kingdom comes. Edmund Burke famously claimed, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. that has inspired action from people for countless years. And while there’s some truth in it, I always want to push back. And say, well, what’s worse than doing nothing is doing evil in the name of good In other words, responding to evil by using some kind of force or coercion or manipulation to get to a good end. For me, that’s problematic. The Apostle Paul in Romans 12, verses I think it’s 19, uh 20 and 21, says, Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. For by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good Paul here uses that phrase, the wrath of God, which for me always requires a bit of definition. The wrath of God here, wrath is. an archaic term for anger. The wrath of God or the anger of God is not a literal attribute of God. Rather, wrath here is a metaphor. And metaphorical language speaks truth, but it does it in a more symbolic way. The wrath of God is a metaphor that speaks of God’s judgment. In fact, anytime you see the wrath of God in the Bible, if in your mind You can think, oh, that’s God’s work of judgment. Then you get at it. The wrath of God is not God literally steaming with rage and anger. Rather, it is God’s very righteous disposition to hold people accountable for their actions So in Romans 12, Paul is saying, don’t avenge yourself, don’t pay back other people if they’ve done evil to you. Leave room for the judgment of God. knowing that God will judge them in the end. Paul in Romans 12 is echoing what Jesus said in the sermon on the Mount about loving enemies. Paul says, if your enemies are hungry, you feed ‘em, and if they’re thirsty, you give ‘em something to drink. In doing this you are using good to reach this ultimate goal of peace. And then he gives us this bit of encouragement, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Sometimes in the face of evil, we want to react. We think, well, we we have to do something, but in following in the ways of Jesus, What our first response is, is to pause, to pray, to think. Before we react, we pause Think about that story in John chapter 8 of Jesus and the woman caught in the act of adultery. This is one of my favorite stories in the Gospels. Jesus is out in public teaching, and a bunch of Pharisees, they they bust into this room and they drag out into the street this woman. And she was in the act of adultery. I always wonder why they didn’t drag the guy out too, because it takes two to uh practice this sin of adultery, but we’ll set that aside for now. So these Pharisees they pull this woman out, and they take this woman to Jesus, interrupts his teaching, and they say to him, Teacher, the law of Moses says we should stone such a woman because we caught her in the act of adultery. But what do you say? Now these Pharisees, they had the law of Moses, the scriptures on their side. And yes, in the law of Moses, it says that you should take people committing adultery and stone them. So Jesus is being forced into a corner here. Jesus has been teaching enemy love. He’s been teaching mercy and grace, particularly for sinners And now here’s a sinner. And the Bible says we should stone such a sinner. Jesus, what do you say? Instead of reacting, Jesus does something really curious. He stoops down and begins riding in the dirt. And I love that. I believe that Jesus felt the pressure that he was under in that moment. And instead of just reacting, he paused. He literally stooped down, begins to write in the dirt. We don’t know what he was writing. And then when Jesus stands up, he says. To him who has no sin, let him be the first one to cast a stone The people, the crowd that had gathered around Jesus and these Pharisees and this woman, they’d picked up rocks. They were ready for Jesus to say, go ahead and stone her But when he says, hey, you, whoever here, whoever here is without sin, you go ahead and be the first one to throw a rock. Well, the crowd recognizes their own sin, their own brokenness, and they think, well, I’m not without sin. And so one by one they drop their rocks and the crowd disperses. The Pharisees go away. And Jesus says to this woman, who I imagine in the story, she hasn’t even raised her head to look up. And Jesus says, Woman, where are your accusers? And for the first time, she looks up and they’re all gone and she says, I don’t see any accusers. And Jesus says, Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. What a beautiful moment of reconciliation. What a beautiful moment of peace in that woman’s life. And that peaceful outcome came not because Jesus entered into a fierce debate with these Pharisees to argue about the Bible. Instead of reacting, Jesus paused. Perhaps as he was riding in the dirt, he was whispering out a little prayer. He took a moment, and I believe that he was filled with wisdom in that moment, and there was a beautiful, peaceful end. What we need in the face of conflict or injustice when the emotional temperature is rising When tensions are high, before we react, we need to pause. We need to breathe. We need to pray. We need to think. Do you know Miroslav Wolf? He is a public theologian and author, professor at Yale Divinity School. He’s also the founding director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He has written a number of influential books, including Exclusion and Embrace, which is a classic book on peacemaking and reconciliation. But in his 2006 book, The End of Memory, Wolff writes, To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated. The second victory when evil is returned After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life. Yes, all that evil needs in order to thrive is for good men to do nothing But in the same sense, evil can also thrive when good men return evil for evil, insult for insult, hurt for hurt. When we respond to insults, for example, with insults, it’s like what Wolf said: evil now has two victories. But instead, if we return goodness in the face of evil, then that evil is extinguished of its power This is why Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, Jesus’ teaching said, You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also And if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. For me, those are challenging words As one who is not naturally patient, as one who is not naturally a giver, man, I want to return an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Right? I don’t want to turn the other cheek. I don’t want to give to those who beg of me. But then again, I’m a follower of Jesus And I believe that Jesus has the words of eternal life. I think Jesus is leading us into a good life, a peaceable and kind kind of life. And because of that, I want to walk in his ways. I want to recognize that left to my own devices, I’m probably going to make a mess of things, particularly in moments of conflict. And so if we’re going to walk in the ways of Jesus together, well, we need the kind of attitude that’s willing to turn the other cheek, that’s willing to go the extra mile. And that kind of disposition, that kind of courage, requires patience. Just a little patience. Well, that’s it for today. Thank you for joining me on this episode. Thanks for listening. Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.