Faith, Patience, and Endurance

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Interesting, isn’t it, how things can be going smoothly in your life, then all of a sudden, they’re not?

Those things may be relatively insignificant, like getting cut off in traffic, misplacing a credit card, or spilling a quart of milk. Or they may be big things, like the illness of a spouse, the death of a family member, the loss of a job.

So, there’s this trait called endurance, which Dictionary.com defines as “the ability or strength to continue or last, especially despite fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions.” Some people just don’t have it. Others do. Some have it in spades.

Harder As You Age?

Endurance gets harder as you age – deserting you when you need it most. I’d like to think that I have an above average amount of endurance, that I can maintain that “bring it on” attitude in the face of the vagaries of old age. But I may be kidding myself.

As I’ve mentioned before, when things go my way, I’m a saint. When they’re not, well….” I can’t resist a swear word even when something minor happens, like when I get behind a driver who likes to drive 15 in a 30-mph zone. I don’t have much patience, sad to say (which causes my wife to roll her beautiful eyes). And patience, I believe - with oneself, with others, and with God - is the key to resilience. 

But the adversities I’ve mentioned, with the exception of death, are short term. What about endurance in the long term, that is, enough of it to get you through life until death?

Tomas Halik
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That, in my view, requires more than the dictionary endurance; it’s something more like strength and courage, the endurance offered by faith, the kind that Isaiah promised: “…They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

As with much of what prophets say, Isaiah was speaking in metaphors. He wasn’t talking about physical strength or weariness. He was talking about what St. Paul wrote to the Philippians an estimated 750 years later: “I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”

Regarding patience with God, Tomas Halik, the Czech philosopher and theologian, believes that faith-filled endurance – the kind that results in eventual unity with God in his/her kingdom – requires such patience.

“Patience,” he writes, is what I consider to be the main difference between faith and atheism. …If the signs of God’s presence lay within easy reach on the surface of the world, as some religious zealots like to think, there would be no need for real faith.

Accepting and Enduring

To mature in one’s faith, he writes in Patience with God, “entails accepting and enduring moments – and sometimes even lengthy periods – when God seems remote or remains concealed. What is obvious and demonstrable doesn’t require faith.

“We don’t need faith when confronted with unshakable certainties accessible to our powers of reason, imagination, or sensory experience. We need faith precisely at those twilight moments when our lives and the world are full of uncertainty, during the cold night of God’s silence.”

I consider the endurance required for our daily troubles, and even for major disasters, practice for the patience and endurance required in “waiting for the Lord.”