36,000 Miles and Waiting — Patience is the Journey

Carl Bushby made a bet in a pub in 1998.

He was 29, at the southern tip of South America, and someone asked whether it was still possible to walk around the world — no planes, no motors, no shortcuts. Carl said yes.

So he flew home, then flew back to that same spot, and started walking north.

They estimated it would take 12 to 13 years. He's been walking for 27.

Here's what stops you when you dig into the story. Of those 27 years, Carl has spent 13 of them actually walking. The other 14? Waiting. Waiting on borders. Waiting for governments to grant permission. Sometimes waiting three years just to take the next step.

More time waiting than walking.

Most of us know exactly what that feels like. What if the waiting is part of the race? Hebrews 12 compares the Christian life to a long-distance run. And the instruction isn't just to run hard — it's to run with patience.

The Greek word is hypomonē. It means to remain under. To stay under something. Not because there's no way out, but because of trust in the One who marked out the course.

That changes what patience actually is. Patience protects who you are. In Luke 21, Jesus gives his disciples a pretty sobering picture of what's ahead — suffering, disruption, the world feeling like it's unraveling. Then he lands on this: "By patient endurance, you will gain your souls."

When hard things come, it's easy to lose yourself inside them. To start thinking the hard season is who you are, instead of just something you're walking through.

Patience holds that together. It takes the long view. It gives time enough room to show what's actually true — instead of letting the worst-case version in your head win.

Patience without purpose can feel like a prison. The Greeks told a story about a king named Sisyphus. His punishment was to push a boulder up a hill every single day, only to watch it roll back down every night.

No finish line. No reason. Just endless endurance.

That's what patience feels like when it's been stripped of purpose. And a lot of us have been there — grinding through something with no sense that it's going anywhere.

But the patience in Hebrews has a course marked out. There's a direction. There's a God who designed the route and doesn't leave the runner alone on it.

Patience with purpose is different. It's not Sisyphus. It's a long walk toward something real. Growth needs a womb. James says it like this: "Let patience have her perfect work, that you may be complete and lack nothing." (James 1:4)

The key word is let.

Don't force the process.

Something is being formed in the waiting — not despite it, but in it. The early church fathers called patience the queen of all virtues. They said she creates the environment where everything else actually matures. Without her, love becomes conditional. Faith turns fragile. Joy goes circumstantial.

Patience is the womb. The promise needs time inside it to become what God said it would be. God gives what He is. Romans 15 says God is the God who gives endurance. And he pairs it with encouragement — because one of the ways he grows patience is by breathing life back into tired people.

What he is, he gives.

So if the waiting has gotten heavy — the answer isn't more grit. It's connection. Stay close to the God who gives patience to those who ask.

He won't shame anyone for needing it.

He's been patient the whole time. What are you waiting on right now — and what would it mean to stop fighting the wait and let it do its work?