It is dangerous, so the conventional wisdom goes, to pray for patience …

Interesting, though, that we don’t consider it equally dangerous to pray for wisdom, and yet the two virtues are closely related.

Notice how closely they are related in James (sometimes known as the wisdom literature of the New Testament because of the apparently unrelated, short, pithy statements on godly living):
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Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces patience. And let patience have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. And, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God …

In the mind of James, the difficulties and trials of life are designed to produce patience by exposing, on the one hand, our profound weakness - physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, etc. - and, on the other hand, our consequent dependence upon God’s own perfections and completions in Christ by which we are made complete. Keeping in mind what Paul says to Timothy about how the Word of God’s wisdom is a gift to strengthen and equip and complete us for the life of godliness (2 Timothy 3:16-17), we begin to get the picture: patience is a function of owning the freeing truth of the gospel regarding our own profound sin and inadequacy and resting in the profound sufficiency of God’s grace provided for us through his Son, Jesus the Christ.

Come, then, having been equipped and carried through the various difficulties and stresses of another week by God’s amazingly sufficient grace toward us in Jesus Christ, and let us worship together, resting and rejoicing together in being made complete and whole in Christ.

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