March 29, 2022

Patience

“Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: you must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” – James 1:19

The day before the big snow storm here in Grosse Pointe and Cleveland, I went to Cleveland to help out with my grandsons. Charlie, fifth grade, was in the Rocky River United Methodist Church basketball program and had a game. Patterned after Catholic Youth or CYO sports events, teams prayed before the game and then had a devotion at half-time. And guess who was asked to do the devotion. Mommy Janeece was the announcer, 8th grader Ethan was the time-keeper, and I did the devotion. A real family event.

As Garrison Keillor once said, Methodists would rather die than to pray in public. Well, that is a bit of an exaggeration but fortunately the director of Christian Education at Rocky River UMC had a script and a great visual for the devotion so the devotion went well and we went on with the second half of the game.

The devotion was about patience although the word patience was not in the scripture verse (see above). I’m not sure who listened carefully and took away from that devotion the huge value of patience when waiting for whatever life hands us. Kids and parents during half time at a ball game is a tough crowd to talk to, especially if you’re talking about patience. But I did my best.

As many of us know well, if you have to teach something to someone, you learn it well yourself. My cousin used to say, “I never really know what I think until I open my mouth.” So even if no one internalized the devotion, I learned and grew from the experience.

Vivian Anderson