“But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” We could think of “perfect work” as a kind of work that is perfect, or we could think of it as the work we do to arrive at perfection. The only thing that is stopping us from being perfect is our patience. A quote attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci goes, “Art is never completed, only abandoned.” There's a popular story of a woman rushing up to a violinist after an incredible concert and saying “I would give my whole life to play as beautifully as you just did.” The violinist’s terse reply: “I did.” We ought to continue working on perfect for the entirety of our lives. That is true patience. The perfect work comes at the end of a very long line of imperfect works that nonetheless slowly but surely improve over time. If we are to let patience have her perfect work, then we need to stop looking at failures as red lights and start seeing them as green lights. Every day that we wake up and find ourselves less than perfect, we must choose to exercise our patience and take up once more our perfect work, or our work towards perfect. If we are to ever be truly perfect and entire, wanting nothing, a completed work of art, then we can't abandon our perfect work. It will require us giving our whole lives to the cause of becoming perfect, but if in the end we can join in with the choirs of angels and sing the song of redeeming love so beautifully that it breaks our heart and causes us to weep with joy, then won't the sacrifice of our entire lives have been worth it? I hope that we can all let patience have her perfect work and try to get a little closer to perfect each and every day.
