I’m sitting here on Thursday morning having my fourth, fifth cup of coffee… who am I kidding? I’ve drunk essentially the entire pot of coffee and its only 8:00am. I was sitting and knitting, while drinking way too much coffee, and thinking about the word “forbearance.”
It’s a great word for right now. We don’t use it often. According to Merriam Webster, the first use of forbearance came in 1576, meaning the refraining of an enforcement, especially a debt. We currently use this meaning in modern contexts, applying it to loan forgiveness or debt repayment. We will probably hear it more in those terms in the coming days.
Forbearance also means “patient self-control; restraint and tolerance.” Again, qualities that we are going to need to survive the stay-at-home instructions, quarantines, and watching the news each day.
I would like to ask your patience and forbearance as we work through moving Nativity’s worship services online. Wednesday night, we tried to live stream Evening Prayer. The sound didn’t work. It was bad. I know. I’m sorry. We’ll try something else next week. Again, forbearance as we work through this.
Our Holy Week services will be a combination of pre-recorded video and live stream video. There are positive and negatives about both options. We will do our best. Forbearance. Internet traffic is heavy these days. Zoom gives a warning when you set up a meeting that video might not work with more than three participants. Facebook suddenly has every church in the nation trying to live stream on Sunday mornings. Forbearance. My favorite meme going around right now is a picture of Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, sitting at the bus stop, and saying, “And just like that, we were all televangelists.” Forbearance.
Zoom meetings are being routinely hacked, so we will have to increase the security of our Nativity Zoom gatherings. You might be asked for a password or registration to join the meeting when you never have before. You might get frustrated that you can only access the meeting through the Nativity weekly email, and now you can’t find that email. Forbearance. Forbearance, and some serious prayer for those people who feel the need to ruin everything good.
I ask your forbearance with your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, the people you live with. None of us are as productive as we expect. We are not always nice. We disappoint each other on a regular basis. We are all operating under trauma, and that is going to express itself in different ways. Their ways might rub uncomfortably against your ways. Forbearance.
What I love most about using the word forbearance is the idea of debt being cancelled. What better word to consider as we enter Holy Week. This week, we will walk with Jesus to the cross, the ultimate debt repayment plan. All our sins forgiven. All our shortcomings, disappointments, and frustrations wiped cleanly away through no merit or work of our own. Simply God’s mercy at work.
So this week, may our forbearance be partnered with mercy. Mercy for each other, and mercy for ourselves. Thanks be to God.
Forbearance, my friends, forbearance.