The Patience of the Spirit

For we, through the Spirit, by faith wait for the hope of righteousness,” — GAL, v. 5.

THERE are times when things look very 4 dark to me — so dark that I have to wait even for hope. It is bad enough to wait sm hope; a long deferred fulfilment carries its own pain. But to wait for hope, to see no glimmer of a prospect and yet to refuse to despair, to have nothing but night before the casement and yet to keep the casement open for possible stars, to have a vacant place in my heart and yet to allow that place to be filled by no inferior presence — it is the grandest patience in all this universe. It is Job in the tempest; it is Abraham on the road to Moriah; it is Moses in the desert of Midian; it is the Son of man in the garden of Gethsemane. There is no patience so hard as that which endures “as seeing Him who is invisible;” it is the waiting for hope. I can wait for the meridian when I get a glimpse of the dawn, but when the very dawn is invisible I would need a giant’s faith. When I see the primrose of hope I can say “The summer will soon be here,” but when the primrose of hope itself is faded, it is divinely strong to say ‘It will bloom again to-morrow.”

Yes, divinely strong, for, O Spirit, the strength is Thine. Thou hast brought into this world a new order of heroes — the men who can wait. The heroes of the past were men to whom waiting was impossible, who rushed impetuously to achieve the impulse of the hour. But Thou hast created a new form of greatness, a fresh type of manhood. In Him, whom we call the Son of man, Thou hast exalted into a mountain what yesterday was a valley. Thou hast made waiting beautiful; Thou hast made patience divine. Thou hast shown us that the cup of sorrow may be accepted when there is no star in the sky. Thou hast taught us that the Father’s will may be received just because it as His will. Thou hast revealed to us that a soul may see nothing but sorrow in the cup and yet may refuse to let it go, convinced that the eye of the Father sees further than its own. Give me this divine power of Thine — the power of Gethsemane. Give me the power to wait for hope itself, to look out from the casement when there are no stars. Give me the power, when the very joy that was set before me is gone down, to stand unconquered amid the night and say, “To the eye of my Father it is perhaps shining still.” I shall reach the climax of strength when I have learned to wait for hope.