Patience and Tribulation

Spirituality Column #35
July 10, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Patience and Tribulation
By Bob Walters

I was a young sportswriter covering a Notre Dame home football game in South Bend (v. Purdue, 1976) and at dinner the night before I sat next to legendary Irish athletic director Edward W. “Moose” Krause.

Highly-rated Notre Dame (11th pre-season) lost its season opener at home to Pitt the previous week and was knocked out of the AP Top 20 rankings.  Dan Divine coached the team to a 9-3 record that season (1976) and the national championship in 1977, but I have never forgotten a funny comment Krause made at dinner that night.

He mentioned that just prior to dinner he had been with the football team in chapel and I asked him what he prayed for. Krause, considering the team’s record, said deliberately, “I pray for patience.”

Great line.

Several years later I was chatting with my friend Jonathan Byrd who owned race cars in the Indianapolis 500. After his team had struggled early in May I mentioned Krause’s comment about praying for patience.

Jonathan, an incredibly bright man of Baptist persuasion and exceptionally well-versed in the Bible, chuckled but made the point, “You have to be careful when you pray for patience.” “Why’s that?” I asked. “Because,” Jonathan said, “God teaches patience through tribulation.”

Yikes.

I was a Christian without the walk in those days, but I understood what Jonathan meant. You’d have to be mighty brave to pray for patience, because you can’t control how God may deem best to provide it to you.

Romans 5:3 in the King James version says “… tribulation worketh patience.” In my NIV Bible this is the lyrical chain where Paul says “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

Nothing is as important in our walk with Christ as our faithful perseverance, and there’s no better word for that than patience … and no greater fruit of patience than hope, which as the verse continues, “does not disappoint.”

You just have to be brave enough, trust God enough, and have the character to pray for patience.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) spends more time praying for patience than actually being patient.