June 19
Patience
The alarm clock screams at you at an ungodly hour. Your kids can’t find their socks, won’t look for them and expect you to know where they are. The milk and your husband have something in common … they are both spoiled. He’s upset because he wants to hear “snap, crackle and pop” while he reads the paper. If he mentions the milk one more time you’re fully prepared to give him “snap, crackle and pop!” It won’t be in his cereal bowl.
You look at your watch, “oh no late again.” You rush through your routine, get dressed as fast as you can. “I can’t be late again.” Oh No! Your last pair of hose just got a run. Isn’t that the way it always is? Dressed in your best jeans, you turn the key in the car. NOTHING! Your car won’t start. What a day, your hose runs and your car won’t!
Life is filled with challenging days, and we can’t do anything to change that fact, but we can do something about the way we react to them. Challenging days can be filled with life when we approach them with a dose of perspective. These days are part of our life’s tapestry. Woven between the days when everything seems to go right are the ones where everything seems to go wrong and the ones when things, well don’t seem to be going at all. All days are not created equal, but we can approach every day with an attitude of gratitude a humble heart and the patience of Job.
Patience isn’t just a virtue; it is what keeps us afloat when “we’re up to here” with life. It is the expression of faith that things will get better, or they won’t, but either way we’ll make it through the trial. It is the ultimate testimony that we trust in God to take care of things and we’re willing for Him to do it in His time.
Patience
How patient are you? On a surface level, I suppose that question has relevance. How patient are you with annoying people? Are you patient when you are in a hurry? Or do you have the ability to delay gratification? But really, I want to ask that question at a deeper level, do you have the patience to wait on God’s timing?
In his book, “In Search of Morality … Living a Fulfilled Life from the Inside Out.” Robert A. Schuller writes, “It may increase your patience to realize that every minute you have is another gift from God. The minute you are living through right now is a gift from God. So when God tells you to wait for Him, He is perfectly within His rights. He is asking you to give back to Him what He has already given to you.”
We are only impatient if we think time belongs to us, but when we know it belongs to God, we have the capacity to be patient. Are you willing to trust in him when you are living in the middle of the story, or do you want to fast forward to the end? Do you want to skip the struggle to get to the resolution, or even in the struggle are you content to trust in God, letting the unseen faith anchor you during troubling times?
The author of Hebrews put it this way, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1 KJV) Are you a person of substance who can depend on the unseen, or are you a shallow living Christian who must have resolution to all of life’s struggles?
God is the same God in the beginning of the promise, during the struggle and when He gives you the desire of your heart. God is good—all the time. And all the time, God is good. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
And that you can depend on. God’s will will be done. In His time.
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
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