"Be patient, therefore,...until the coming of the Lord."

I begin this Third Sunday in Advent here in the Chapel preaching on the necessity for Christian patience. Advent is the Christian season of waiting and expectancy. Therefore it is also a season of patience, because what we really need in life can't be ours merely by wanting it. It must come as a gift from God, in God's own good time. Patience is needed.

I will end today in the Chapel celebrating a wedding of a couple who waited until they were past thirty before being married. Yet who knows how long it will be before they are truly married? Marriage is but one of the everyday human activities which require patience.

So I'm claiming a linkage between today's text from James ("Be patient,...brothers and sisters, until the coming of …