Kept

But you have kept the good wine until now . . . 

 - From John 2

So much trouble has come to the world, because of impatience. Maybe impatience is a sort of root of all evil. Like the love of money . . . impatience leads us down paths that become increasingly hurtful, hostile, and dangerous. 

Maybe the love of money, itself, stems from impatience. People don't trust God, so they become impatience and start hoarding money. Or they start committing violence and destruction in the streets, with impudence, right there for the cameras.

They fail to cultivate true godly love for others . . . it makes them impatient. Impatience makes people want to bend others to their will. They lose the art of empathy. They begin caring for others, less and less. 

Impatience infects everything in society. It gets reinforced in our popular culture. Our music and arts reflect the notion that problems can be solved in under two and a half hours. A three-minute musical pick-me-up can make me believe that love will be mine within moments. 

Now, I believe in the arts, and I prize music perhaps above all other things in society. But we have to control the message . . . not let the message control us.

Impatient people feed their angst. They become political people in corporations, communities and governments. They actually believe that power and wealth are owed to them . . . and they want it now.

Think about how overused the word "deserve" is today. "You deserve to be happy." No you don't. Not necessarily. We don't really deserve anything. We should be focused on becoming the type of people that actually do deserve wonderful things . . . but we're not there yet. 

The concept of Democracy is being twisted in our time. Just get the votes. Acquire the power . . . and then intimidate your bare majority so that it makes law based on the wishes of the few. And then they use that power to corral the opposition so that it fears even the expression of its honest views about all of it. 

Impatience is closely linked to evil. 

But Jesus kept the good wine for later. If we just wait. Focus on the here and now. Take care of those things that are our own business. Serve those around us. Bring joy to our own inner circle of people. Do good. Listen carefully to others. Make sure the children and elders in your midst are cared for. Do the little things. Think pure thoughts and do pure things. Don't worry about being "a good human being" by saying all the right things, liking the right posts, sharing the right memes, and displaying the right bumper stickers. Just be a good person. That's all. Be kind. Be gentle. Be patient.

That's really the exact way to solve all these vexing problems in society. Do good. 

Meanwhile . . . Christ has kept some very, very good things in store for us. And they're a whole lot more wonderful than money. Or power. Or wine.