— Spritual Perspectives —
What Time is It?

Kris Pikaart

By Kris Pikaart
Special to the Independent

“I don’t know why this is happening to me,” she said, “I guess that God wants to teach me patience.”

My friend is in the thick of dealing with another country’s huge bureaucracy as she tries to navigate an international adoption. The process is maddening, insane, and illogical. And at the heart of it, there is a child waiting to come home.

Our lunch conversation meandered over to that common place of trying to put some meaning to what feels like meaningless struggle. She wondered if the point of all of this frustration is for her to be patient and to wait on God’s timing.

I have lots of people come and go through my office talking about all manner of struggle. And almost all of them are trying to work out that age old question: “Why would God let this happen to me, to my family, to my community?” Or, to put a little finer point on it, “What am I supposed to learn from this struggle?” And together we make stabs at an answer. Not because I believe that I have any special insight into what God wants from anyone else (It’s enough that I contemplate what my own growth and response should be). But when we suffer, it is paramount that our suffering not be felt meaningless. So we often speculate about what good can come of our situations. And the answer, the guess, that I hear most often is this idea of learning patience.

I’ve heard the same idea from a man in the midst of deep marital problems. I’ve heard it from many people who are sick, and from those saints who are permanent full-time caregivers of the sick. I’ve heard it from people who are trying to get services for a child with special needs.

Somehow it is almost always patience that gets invoked by us humans as the highest possible spiritual gift or value. As if there is nothing so important to learn, so elusive, as patience.

And that might be right. Consider the woman whom I just visited this week in her home. She has lived for well over 90 years. She has seen it all in that amount of time and she feels she has lived plenty long enough. She awaits her dying with a gentle patience that is nearly palpable when I walk through her door. “God will do this in His own sweet time. I know that by now.” The sweet patience born of a lifetime of learning that things of true value, that things of God’s own timing, cannot be rushed sweeps over me the second I enter her house, and I want nothing else but to sit on next to her and rest and wait with her.

But that example aside, I have been asking myself all week: is patience all it is cracked up to be? Are there other gifts of spiritual strength that are just as important that we learn we have devalued? Let me tell you where I am coming from. I’m not sure anyone intended to teach me this, but as I child I learned that it was very important to be nice and good and not to raise a fuss about things. I got the idea that this is how God wanted me to be — to accept things and situations and endure them. I just don’t remember getting the message that God might sometimes like me to raise my voice, to complain loudly, to act decisively, to create a ruckus when I encountered something that was wrong, when another was being treated unjustly, or when I saw unrighteousness.

Certainly this is all over in the Bible. The one I contemplate the most is that famous passage from Ecclesiastes about time:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. (Ecclesiates 3: 1-8)

I hear in that a reminder that just as patience and waiting is the gift of some phases of life, so too is doing battle and raising our voices the gift of other phases.

Maybe my friend is to learn patience. But maybe the lesson of this pain, of this struggle, is that some things — like the safety of a child — are worth battling for. Maybe struggle is intended to activate us, to make us furious at injustice, and to enter into just action.

The same goes for the folks that I see who are sick.

Certainly, like my elderly friend, there is a time for sitting back in gentle acceptance of sickness and even death. But there is also a time for engaging — for nagging anyone who will listen for an answer, for not stopping until one has been heard and responded to. Maybe it is a time for being like the persistent widow of Luke 18 and asking, begging, pleading with God for justice and righteousness. Maybe we are to learn that being nice and good and non-confrontational is not always the highest spiritual value.

It all comes down to that beautiful concept of discernment. In prayer and deep contemplation we can ask, “God, please let me know what time it is now.”

Kris Pikaart is the chaplain for the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care System. She can be contacted at kjpikaart@yahoo.com or (505) 863-7140.

This column is written by area residents, representing different faith communities, who share their ideas about bringing a spiritual perspective into our daily lives and community issues. For information about contributing a guest column, contact Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola at The Independent: (505) 863-6811 ext. 218 or lizreligion01@yahoo.com.