We know the sayings that truth is in the telling of it, and history is written by the winners. Behind these pithy notes of cynicism, however, is a profound truth elemental to the biblical thought world: God ordinarily tells the truth by telling a story, not by dropping it out of heaven onto our heads. And this includes, especially, the truth he tells us about our suffering, and the suffering and longings of the world at large.

As some have noted, Isaiah’s majestic prophecy tells the tale with all the plot twists and intrigue of the finest detective novels. Approximately two-thirds into this lengthy book, the Lord reveals his gracious purpose for Israel. But if – according to the sand-and-stars God of Abraham – the story of Israel is not the whole story, if God loves those outside of Israel as well, what about them? At the end of Isaiah 41, this is a problem God’s remarkable kindness poses, and in the first words of Isaiah 42, God responds: “Behold, my Servant.” In these so-called “Servant songs” in Isaiah, the figure of the Servant is the answer to this dilemma, and yet perhaps not in the way readers would expect. Who is this Servant anyway? “Behold, my Servant,” says God, but who is he? A little later in Isaiah 42, we learn who it is not: national Israel is not the Servant, even though she had long enjoyed the honorific (42:18-19). Because she has turned honor to dishonor, Israel has been handed over to the powerful nations as a punishment for rebellion. Even then, Israel did not repent (48:20-22). In fact, Israel is now as much in need of mercy and reconciliation as the outside nations are. Who, then, is the Servant, if not Israel?

If national Israel is not the Servant-resolution to the problem of God’s relationship to the world, who is? The Servant to whom God points us readers is, importantly, unlike Israel, in fact. This seems central to his identity. Unlike disobedient Israel, the Servant will stroll through the crowds as the very embodiment of God’s righteousness and justice. Israelites slide into the role of awed spectators, following the Servant with their eyes while he – not them, and yet for them – bears sins away.

So why not just say so at the end of Isaiah 42, where the dilemma has been posed and we readers were ready for the answer? Why does Isaiah, and God through him, lead us on this journey of close calls and disappointments, of promising characters who turn out to be false identifications for the Servant? Why let these cul-de-sac options distract us from the correct answer? Like the finest detective writers, Isaiah allows misidentifications to stand for hushed moment after hushed moment, casting suspicions here and there, drawing a curved line rather than a straight one from our distress to its resolution. In the telling of the story, the misconceptions, and our entertaining them as possible Servant figures, contribute to our understanding of the whole. Isaiah walks Israel in front us, and then Cyrus, and then the Remnant, all paraded for our consideration, as titillating yet ultimately disappointing invitations to our being enthralled in the discovery of the One. But the One, the true Servant, is who he is in the ways he is not these others. It is part of the fabric of his identity that he is unlike the cul-de-sac options, and our knowing him depends on our seeing who he isn’t, in order to see who he is.

Here is a lesson in God’s patience: it includes his willingness to endure fictions for a while, to wait through a succession of counterfeits, and all the turmoil they bring. Yet his patience partakes of – exceeds, in fact, as an original exceeds a copy – all the definite, aesthetic purpose of the finest detective writers, being no mere tease but a gradual, storied enlargement of the heart that will receive him richly in the end.

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Peter the Apostle knew this hard thing called patience all too well, and in one place he addresses the problem in a form we easily recognize: “where is this ‘coming’ he promised?” (2 Peter 3:4). It’s not Peter’s question, of course; it comes from “scoffers” who reason that, “Hey, everything seems to be moving along just as it has since creation itself.” Peter’s answer gives us the sweeping story of the world in divine perspective, a story with two basic acts. It begins with the world formed by and through water and word and finishes with Noah’s great Flood of cosmic judgment, the destruction of that older world by water, from which a new world emerged.  The world that now exists, says Peter, is by that same word also being stored up for judgment and, on the other side, the real and final new creation in which God will dwell gloriously with his own. To scoffers then and now, Peter’s message is this: look at the end of “that” world and see the certain end of “this” one.

But Peter is not finished yet. A few verses later he turns his attention from the scoffers to the faithful, and offers a comment on how we should read the days and years leading up to the end of “this” world: “And count the patience of the Lord as salvation” (3:15).

The “patience” of the Lord: what a curious expression! It is not how I am accustomed to think about this period of trying delay, but perhaps it should be. After all, the God who is sure to act in the future is even now the God who unfailingly loves and cares for his own. And our struggling, fighting, and thrashing about in the flesh and in “this” world is not lost on him. No, he is not only the Sovereign who orders all things and works out all things in space and time according to his own secret, eternal pleasure (on its own not so comforting a thought). He is also, wonderfully, the God who, as this Sovereign, truly loves his suffering ones. He can accomplish in a moment whatever in his wisdom he knows we truly need, for his infinite power does not run a close second to his love for his own. And no doubt it is precisely because he loves us, so deeply and perfectly loves us, that the period of delay is not only a matter of waiting but of divine patience. What a concept: that the eternal Lord of heaven longs for our relief and glory just as we do, but perfectly. Yes, any old god of the pagans could control the universe, but only a God who loves as he loves, and so “waits” while we wait, can be called patient. His wise, loving patience is our “salvation,” says the Apostle. It is not only a mystery, then; not only a matter of endurance and testing and believing and trusting; it is positive, fruitful, saving. Now read Hopkins’ poem:

PATIENCE, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,

But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks

Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;

To do without, take tosses, and obey.

Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,

Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks

Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks

Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.

We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills

To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills

Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.

And where is he who more and more distils

Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills

His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.

An analysis of the poem must await another time, but when we take it in as a whole, don’t the words of Hopkins ring baldly true? Isn’t this the story of every child of God? Is it not the honest admission of every saint that our wrestling, our thrashing about in the here and now is sometimes as chaotic as those lines, our struggle as gut-wrenching as the heart “grating on itself” and bruised? Do not those words belong to every last one of us?

But note the breathtaking contrast in Hopkins’ resolution. Where is Kindness himself, the “distiller” of “delicious kindness?” This is, as the psalmists testify, the Great Question for Christian sufferers. Hopkins replies: “He is patient.” For Hopkins, it seems impatient chaos on our side contrasts with patient love on his. Who is the God of suffering saints? Neither impotent Kindness, nor patient Unkindness, but patient Kindness. How Petrine.

Maybe, just maybe, our weak faith is not the inevitable effect of the whims of a capricious Ruler who simply chooses not to bring relief when he surely could. Maybe, just maybe, he isn’t so capricious after all, so calloused, so unfeeling toward his suffering, waiting children, so hopelessly out of touch with the urgency of a life that sometimes must go without – how long, O Lord! Maybe he’s simply more patient than we are.

A “patient” God: now there’s a thought.

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