A Living Faith: James 5: 7-11

Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa tells the following story of her Kenyan cook Kamante: 

"One night, after midnight, he (Kamante) suddenly walked into my bedroom with a hurricane-lamp in his hand, silent, as if on duty. It must have been only a short time after he came into my house for he was very small: he stood by my bedside like a dark bat that had strayed into the room, with his lamp in his hand. He spoke to me very solemnly, “Msabu,” he said, “I think you had better get up.” I sat up in bed bewildered; but when I told Kamante to go away, he did not move. “Msabu,” he said again, “I think you had better get up. I think that God is coming.” 

When I heard this, I did get up, and asked why he thought so. He gravely led me into the dining-room which looked West, toward the hills. From the door-windows I now saw a strange phenomenon. There was a big grass fire going on, out in the hills, and the grass burning all the way from the hill-top to the plain; when seen from the house it was nearly a vertical line. It did indeed look as if some gigantic figure was moving and coming toward us. I stood for some time and looked at it, with Kamante watching by my side, then I began to explain the thing to him. I meant to quiet him for I thought that he had been terribly frightened. But the explanation did not seem to make much of an impression on him one way or another; he clearly took his mission to have been fulfilled when he had called me. “Well yes,” he said, “it may be so. But I thought that you had better get up in case it was God coming.”  I apologize for the lengthy quotation, but that’s what James says to his readers, except with more certainty! 

As he begins to wrap up his letter, he reminds his friends that the Lord is coming. 

In fact, like Kamate, he tells his readers twice, but not for the reason we might expect.