Wilberforce's Forty-Year Wait

In 1789, William Wilberforce stood before the British Parliament and delivered a three-and-a-half-hour speech calling for the abolition of the slave trade. The vote failed. He introduced the bill again the next year. It failed again. And the next year. And the next.

For two decades, Wilberforce endured ridicule, death threats, and the slow grind of political defeat. Friends urged him to move on to winnable causes. His health deteriorated so badly that doctors predicted he wouldn't survive another winter. Yet each spring, he rose again in Parliament and made his case. He didn't rage. He didn't scheme for violent revolution. He simply persisted — with courtesy, with prayer, and with an unshakable conviction that the Lord's timing was not his own.

The slave trade was finally abolished in 1807, eighteen years after that first speech. Full emancipation throughout the British Empire came in 1833 — just three days before Wilberforce died.

James tells us to be patient like the farmer who waits for the precious fruit of the earth, and to take the prophets as an example of suffering and patience. Wilberforce understood what the prophets knew: faithfulness is not measured in seasons but in steadfastness. The Almighty does not ask us to control the harvest. He asks us to keep planting, keep watering, keep standing — and to trust that the early and latter rains will come in His perfect time.