Before his election as our twentieth United States President, James A. Garfield, was a well-known gospel preacher and educator. He had also been another kind of president; president of an institution known as Hiram College. The story is told of one man who brought his son to Garfield for entrance into the college with the following request: “The boy can never take in all you have to offer. He wants to get through quicker. Can you arrange it for him?” “Oh yes,” answered Garfield, “He can take a short course. It all depends on what you want to make of him. When God wants to make an oak tree he takes a hundred years. He only requires two months to grow a squash.”
While patience is no doubt a valuable virtue, many of us have a long way to go before realizing such through personal experience. Waiting will have to wait. We want what we want and we want it now!
Young people expect the financial success their parents spent a lifetime together in building by the time they get back from their credit-financed honeymoon. The children soon born are expected to navigate the world of adulthood by the time they reach middle-school. And whatever problems surface along the way are expected to be solved just like they are on television – conveniently and effortlessly, and in the short span of time sandwiched between fast-forwarded commercials.
But life does not always imitate art. And what we want is not always what we get. Instant coffee and instant potatoes are as close as the kitchen pantry; instant solutions are a bit harder to come by.
Arnold Glasgow had the right idea in observing, “You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not smashing it.”
As we, as God’s children, “run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1), may we never forget that some things (and yes, and often those matters most important in life) simply will not be rushed.