Tomorrow we are looking at PPK: Peace, Patience, Kindness.  I’ll use this as an example of cultivating patience.

In his book Tell It Slant, author Eugene Peterson uses the short parable in Luke 13:6-9—a parable about manure, of all things—to talk about our need to practice resurrection in everyday life. In the parable, a man has a fig tree in his vineyard that doesn’t yield any fruit. Frustrated, he says to the man who takes care of the vineyard that after three years, it’s time to cut the thing down. But the caretaker replies, “Leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.” Peterson reflects on how this parable challenges us as believers—a challenge worth hearing at Easter, when we celebrate the power of resurrection. He writes:

Instead of goading us into action, [Jesus’ Manure Story] takes us out of action. We have just come across something that offends us, some person who is useless to us or the kingdom of God, “taking up the ground,” and we lose patience and either physically or verbally get rid of him or her. “Chop him down! Chop her down! Chop it down.” We solve kingdom problems by amputation.

Internationally and historically, killing is the predominant method of choice to make the world a better place. It is the easiest, quickest, and most efficient way by far to clear the ground for someone or something with more promise. The Manure Story interrupts our noisy, aggressive problem-solving mission. In a quiet voice the parable says, “Hold on, not so fast. Wait a minute. Give me some more time. Let me put some manure on this tree.” Manure?

Manure is not a quick fix. It has no immediate results—it is going to take a long time to see if it makes any difference. If it’s results that we are after, chopping down a tree is just the thing: we clear the ground and make it ready for a fresh start. We love beginning: birthing a baby, christening a ship, the first day on a new job, starting a war. But spreading manure carries none of that exhilaration. It is not dramatic work, not glamorous work, not work that gets anyone’s admiring attention. Manure is a slow solution. Still, when it comes to doing something about what is wrong in the world, Jesus is known for his fondness for the minute, the invisible, the quiet, the slow—yeast, salt, seeds, light. And manure.

Manure does not rank high in the world’s economies. It is refuse. Garbage. We organize efficient and sometimes elaborate systems to collect it, haul it away, get it out of sight and smell. But the observant and wise know that this apparently dead and despised waste is teeming with life—enzymes, numerous microorganisms. It’s the stuff of resurrection.

Lord, I have heard of your fame;
I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord.
Renew them in our day,
in our time make them known;
in wrath remember mercy.

–Habakkuk 3:2

Tomorrow I’ll introduce this verse that I’d like everyone above the age of 4 to memorize. We’ll seek to learn & pray it together in the language of the 1984 New International Version (NIV84)

CS Lewis:
Though natural likings should normally be encouraged, it would be quite wrong to think that the way to become charitable is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings. Some people are ‘cold’ by temperament; that may be a misfortune for them, but it is no more a sin than having a bad digestion is a sin; and it does not cut them out from the chance, or excuse them from the duty, of learning charity. The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed. (People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for anything like showing off, or patronage.) But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.

Consequently, though Christian charity sounds a very cold thing to people whose heads are full of sentimentality, and though it is quite distinct from affection, yet it leads to affection. The difference between a Christian and a worldly man is not that the worldly man has only affections or ‘likings’ and the Christian has only ‘charity’. The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he ‘likes’ them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on — including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.    (see more at here)

(I’m fascinated by this 1884 articulation of the different types of people there are—and of his wonderful pushing the more amiable towards biblical love.)

The love produced by the Holy Spirit is not a love which comes out of men on account of their natural constitution. I have known persons who are tenderly affectionate by nature—and this is good, but it is not spiritual love—that is the fruit of nature and not of Grace! An affectionate disposition is admirable, but it may become a danger by leading to inordinate affection, a timid fear of offending, or an idolatry of the creature.  I do not condemn natural amiability—on the contrary, I wish that all men were naturally amiable—but I would not have any person think that this will save him, or that it is a proof that he is renewed.
Only the love which is the fruit of the Spirit may be regarded as a mark of Grace. Some people, I am sorry to say, are naturally sour—they seem to have been born at the season of crabapples and to have been fed on vinegar. They always take a fault-finding view of things. They never see the sun’s splendor and yet they are so clear-sighted as to have discovered his spots. They have a great specialty of power for discerning things which it were better not to see. They do not remember that the earth has proved steady and firm for centuries, but they have a lively recollection of the earthquake, and they quake, even now, as they talk about it.  Such as these have need to cry for the indwelling of the Spirit of God, for if He will enter into them His power will soon overcome the tendency to sourness, for, “the fruit of the Spirit is love.” Spiritual love is nowhere found without the Spirit and the Spirit is nowhere dwelling in the heart unless love is produced.