Leader's Insight: Exercises in Patience

From my journal: My to-do list for 25 July 2006

Pack (carry-on only) and assemble notes and PowerPoint material for lectures in Colorado.
Fly (6 am) from Boston to Indianapolis (connecting through Chicago) and spend several hours with two close friends.
Fly (6 pm) from Indianapolis to Denver (connecting through Chicago) in order to give my lectures the following day.
Arrive Denver: Pick up Hertz car and check into hotel at airport.

What Actually Happened:

Notes and PowerPoint material were left in my vehicle at the Boston airport parking lot. Discovered this over Buffalo. (Oh, God! Anoint my memory!)
In Chicago I learned that Indianapolis flights had been cancelled. Visit with close friends won’t happen…terribly disappointed. My friends and I will not be able to achieve world peace; nominate George Bush’s successor; solve the problems of the worship wars; and identify five growth stocks that will secure our retirements on a Bill Gates level. (Lord, let mid-summer storms be cursed!)
On to Denver (new routing on overbooked planes: Chicago, Houston, Denver). Three extra hours of flight: no books; no iPod battery power. (Prepared sermon on hell.)
Arrive in Denver and discover: Hertz computer down; hotel workout room being remodeled; tomorrow’s schedule changed. (Today’s Bible verse: “To keep me from being conceited, the Lord gave me a thorn in the flesh.”)

“In all these things,” Paul says, “we are more than conquerors.” Really now! My wife, Gail, says on the phone that these are events designed to help me grow. I am weary of growing today. Then I remember the traumatized children of Iraq and Lebanon and Israel.

I’ve been binging on C.S. Lewis this summer: One Lewis comment sent me scurrying to the writings of St. Francis de Sales. Scanning through his Devout Life (courtesy of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, www.ccel.org), I came across this line: “In a word, we are like the Paphlagonian partridge, which has two hearts; for we have a very tender, pitiful, easy heart towards ourselves, and one which is hard, harsh and strict towards our neighbor.” I’d never heard of a Paphlagonian partridge before and am stymied as to the pronunciation. But Francis is spot on. Two hearts! I’ve occasionally noted this Paphlagonian phenomena in myself.

Back to C.S. Lewis: This month I’ve re-read Letters to an American Lady. The “lady” seems demanding, a bit self-absorbed, impatient, but smart. Lewis—somewhere in his life—decided that he had an obligation to answer every letter sent his way, and the lady took advantage of this. Bless this brilliant man who, sans complaint, treated her like a queen as he responded to her oft-quirky concerns. From his many years of correspondence with her, these comments:

“We (presumably Lewis and his brother) were talking about cats and dogs the other day and decided that both have consciences but the dog, being an honest, humble person, always has a bad one, but the cat is a Pharisee and always has a good one. When he sits and stares you out of countenance, he is thanking God that he is not as these dogs, or these humans, or even as these other cats!”

“The Devil used to try to prevent people from doing good works, but he’s now learned a trick worth two of that: he organizes ’em instead.”

“I must not let my own present unhappiness harden my heart against the woes of others. You too are going through a dreadful time. Ah well, it will not last forever. There will come a day for all of us when ‘it is finished.’ God help us all.”

“It will be nice when we all wake up from this life which has indeed something like nightmare about it.”

“Why shouldn’t we have wrinkles? Honorable insignia of long service to this warfare.”

“Try not to think—much less, speak—of their sins. One’s own are a much more profitable theme! And if, on consideration, one can find no fault on one’s own side, then cry for mercy: for this must be a most dangerous delusion.”

“It will not bother me in the hour of death to reflect that I have been ‘had for a sucker’ by any number of imposters; but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need.”

“Do you know, only a few weeks ago I realized suddenly that I at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood. I’d been trying to do it for years; and like you, each time I thought I’d done it, I found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again, but this time I feel sure it is the real thing. And (like learning to swim or to ride a bicycle) the moment it does happen it seems so easy and you wonder why on earth you didn’t do it years ago.”

(Back to Gordon) I must declare my heart: I hate war; I really, really, really hate it. I say this because I have heard hardly a word from any fellow Christ-followers (leader or non-leader) that indicates a sense of horror or anguish over the violence that is spiraling up and out of control across the world. St. Francis hated war enough that he got on a boat, sailed to the Middle East and walked through the battle lines in search of the leader of the Muslim armies. He failed in his peace-making effort, but everyone knew where he stood on the issue of war. I wonder what he’d do today.

Pastor and author Gordon MacDonald is chair of World Relief and editor at large of Leadership, and a monthly columnist at Leadership Weekly.

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