im patient

I like to think of Christians all as patients being admitted into a hospital with a guaranteed cure (let's say this prescription is called Salvation) that's injected upon admittance and then therapy over time (let's call this sanctification) - this post applies mostly to those going through the therapy phase.

The issue with all of us patients is that we're all so impatient with the rate of this therapy - in the past two years I suffered through a shoulder dislocation and a disc hernia, so I know first hand what a more tangible version of this impatience feels like. Why is the shoulder I just popped back in not feeling normal within two days? How is it that my back still feels bad 8 months after herniation? (you may already note the short-sightedness of such claims).

Just to be very clear, the cure is still Jesus Christ (and nothing else) and that's not through our own efforts. Nor am I here to defy the possibility of miracles and sudden healing (both in our physical bodies and spiritual beings) - but for most aspects of our lives, I find that our desired timing is not what God envisions, and this is quite intentional. I've come to the conclusion this is largely due to two reasons:

1. We are sinners. We often mistake the symptoms for the actual cause - when we catch a cold, we're in a rush to get rid of the coughs and the sniffles, but what we really need to do is increase our immunity and possibly even take antibiotics (doctors don't crucify me, it's not that deep of an analogy) to pull out the sickness itself. Modern self-help tactics and philosophy teaches us that we're good people that have just been hurt over time, which leads us to mend the hurts and not the actual cause of the evil - our origins as sinners. Yes, the Gospel allows us to replenish our broken relationship with God and grants us salvation, but becoming more Christ-like and doing our best to become the best Christian we possibly can be requires us to continuously chip away at this sinful identify and battle against our tendencies to be like old selves. It's not overnight.

2. Longer horizons (at least in our human perspective) makes us actually understand and benefit from God's plan for us. Our patience is at a point of depletion where we're unable to watch 30 second clips in one sitting - I'm skeptical that most of my readers have even made it this far. We see in the old testament repeated mistakes generation after generation, regardless of the depth of God working the descendants saw in their forefathers. I have very low faith in our current generation to learn from even our own mistakes and that's why it's a process. We need it to be baked over time (at least longer than what we desire) to be able to look back and thoroughly understand "oh that's why that happened."

I'm not God so I can't speak on His behalf, but I can say for a fact that I would not have gained the wisdom I have now without it being on his watch. If everything resolved within my own time frame, I would've gone right back to how I was before without the gratefulness and the understanding that I have (all thanks to Him) to live in His presence with this upgraded perspective on the life he has given me. Two examples recently:

1. I noted above, but I would not have changed my habits (posture, diet, sleep cycle) if it weren't for my shoulder and back. Every single thing always points back to the Gospel, and things we are given that we take for granted. Being born to two healthy and young parents, health has never been the top of my concern list and I really destroyed my health after moving to NYC. If it wasn't for the warnings (both painful but bearable with plenty of resources to help me - shoutout to my uncle who is literally a back doctor), I wouldn't have had the wake up call I need to cherish my body. I'm still in recovery and even now whenever I take my hand off the wheel and get too complacent about my physical being, I get reminders through a gentle yet firm soreness in both areas. Please don't get me wrong here prosperity gospel warriors - this isn't God punishing me, He's allowing it to happen as it makes me better and it's exactly what I need in every instance.

2. I've always lived with guilt that I wasn't good enough to my brother and (most certainly) tried to make up for it by being a youth group teacher in New York. Without diving too much into it, after 4 years of feeling so, God's given me the opportunity to serve him and provide for him for a month in NY while he's taking a gap semester. Weird flex but it's exactly a point in time where I have the necessary means to provide for him (by "provide" I mean ordering Instacart) while also learning a lot from him (I've cut out eating late at night and sleeping at the same time has held each other accountable with not doom scrolling at night). I can't express enough how impatient I've been about being the good older brother, but God has forced me to let go and just let Him do this thing (actually Him here is both God and him as in my brother, hope you're not reading this).

In case you're Gen Z impatient and just jumped to the end for the conclusion, you can keep being impatient, there's no scroll to the end in God's playbook.