Patience is a Virtue
a sermon based on Genesis 29:14a-30
Randy L Quinn

Imagine the setting in which this story must have been told. Shepherds are gathered around a small fire ring. The sheep are sleeping securely within their vision – or maybe even within the confines of a small pen.

There was no Mariner's game on that night, so the radio was turned off and their eyes turned toward the heavens. While staring at the stars, one of the elder shepherds begins to tell the story of Jacob.

By the time the story is over, the rest of the shepherds are in stitches. The quiet summer hillside is alive with the laughter of the shepherds envisioning this trickster as he is tricked.

And like all good jokes, if we have to explain what's so funny, we'll never be able to laugh at it.

But most of us miss the humor of the story. Some of what we miss is in the translation – for the Hebrew is filled with puns that are hard to translate. Jacob, whose name means "grabby" has made a life of grabbing what belongs to someone else. Now he grabs a wife only to learn in the morning that it was the wrong woman.

As the younger of two sons, he works with his mother to acquire the benefits of being the oldest. Now he meets a man who gives him the older daughter when he wanted the younger one.

Jacob's father had failing eyesight, so Jacob's mother dressed him in sheepskin so his aging father would think he was his brother. Now Jacob is blinded by love; but I'm still not sure how Laban dressed Leah so Jacob would think she was her sister . . . J

What I do know is the storyteller's irony is evident. In fact, just yesterday I told this story to someone who didn't know it was in the Bible and he laughed out loud.

We may not buy into the assumptions about a father literally giving away his daughter, but we can appreciate the humor of Jacob being tricked.

But behind the humor we also hear some important reminders about what is really important in life and how things worth having are worth waiting for.

Our society has grown accustomed to having things instantly.

When our air conditioner was not working properly, we expected the serviceman to be waiting at the phone for our call and to walk through our door almost as quickly as we hung up the phone.

When we eat out, we expect things to happen quickly, too. The food should be good, but it's almost as important that we don't have to wait too long before we can eat. When I ate out this week, I was frustrated that I had to wait to get the ticket from the waitress so I could pay – rather than enjoying the opportunity for a longer visit.

We know in our minds that "good things come to those who wait," but we're not very patient.

When we invest money in the stock market, we get antsy if our stock isn't going up on a daily basis rather than looking at the long-haul and seeing if the trend is up or down after five or ten or even twenty years.

In 1997 I came across an article that pointed out the fallacy of investing in the stock market on a short-term basis and the wisdom of investing over a long period of time. "Measuring from 1930, stocks were down 19 years out of 67. That's almost 30 percent of the time. . . . If we stretch our holding period to three years, stocks were down seven of 64 periods, or 11 percent. Annual returns for 10-year holding periods after 1939, on the other hand, never had a loss."

I don't know what the recent downturn would do to the numbers, but I think the message would still be the same – those of us willing to look long term are more likely to experience gains than those who are looking for any "get rich quick" schemes.

Putting a little aside on a regular basis might mean fewer luxuries now, but in the end there is a much greater reward.

Jacob is willing to invest in the long term to gain what he sees as the best reward. And he finds that time seems to be compressed as he works for what he truly loves. Jacob is so in love with Rachel that seven years seems like "only a few days" to him.

How many parents have ever said that about their children? They grow up so fast. Time becomes compressed and it seems as though one minute we're buying baby bonnets, the next we're looking at prom dresses.

There are certainly times when we wish things would go quicker.

We look forward to those important milestones of putting the diaper pail away and storing the high chair. But along with each of those milestones comes an investment of time in training and teaching. None of them come easy, none of them come suddenly.

But greater things happen if we keep our focus on the long term goal of raising our children to be well-adjusted adults. And keeping our focus on the long term also helps ease the burden of the little crises that occur along the way.

I'd like to suggest that our faith is that way, too.

Faith doesn't come to us full grown in the middle of the night. Some people have vivid conversion stories and experiences, but even they do not come away from it with a mature faith. Faith is a growing adventure.

Investing in our faith is like investing in stocks. There are up times and there are down times. And if we quit every time there is a down time, we will never grow.

Investing in our faith is like raising children. If we keep our focus on the long term, our faith will mature in a healthy way.

We invest in our faith in a variety of ways, most of which take time. We do what Jacob did while he was working for Laban. We wait. We study. We give. We work. And we watch as the miracle of faith begins to take shape and grow in us.

We join a Bible Study or a mission group or a prayer circle.

We begin a regular practice of prayer and scripture reading and devotions.

We start the habit of making financial commitments to the work of the church.

We volunteer to teach children or serve dinners or visit shut ins.

We get involved in social services or social justice or both.

And with each event along the way, our faith begins to take shape. And over time as each event adds to the ones before, we find ourselves becoming more and more Christ-like. And hopefully, we will find our love of God growing to the point that we feel like Jacob who thought the seven years of work were like a few brief days.

What we will eventually become remains a mystery as our lives and our faith unfolds. Jacob had no idea how the story of his faith would unfold nor could he comprehend the role that Laban would unintentionally and unwittingly play in the story of our faith.

I don't want to take away too much from next week's sermon, but there is a message for us in today's story that becomes clear in next week's text. Last week, God appeared to Jacob at Bethel. There God is described as the God of his father and his grandfather (Gen 28:13). After next week's story, God is described as the God of Jacob as well as Isaac and Abraham.

Jacob's faith is growing as he works for Laban. A long term transformation is taking place, one piece at a time.

In this particular story Jacob is humbled. And in his humility he begins to see how God is at work in his life and in his circumstances. What he cannot see – and will not become clear for generations – is how God is at work through this particular story.

Jacob is investing his energy and working for Rachel's hand in marriage. He is tricked into taking Leah as well. And while Leah appears to be the innocent victim in the story, God blesses her despite what Jacob thinks. It's the children of Leah who will be the ancestors of Moses and David and eventually Jesus.

Fourteen years of working for Laban is a long-term investment that paid off in ways unforeseen and in many ways unforeseeable. And those who reaped the benefits of his labor included Laban and Leah as well as Jacob and Rachel and all of us.

Laban and his friends probably had a good laugh at Jacob's expense when he took "the wrong wife." But God got the last laugh as Laban tricks Jacob into fulfilling the promises already made to him before he was even born.

And as we all know, "he who laughs last, laughs best."

Thanks be to God. Amen.