Patience

It should not come as a surprise to those of us who make it our practice to ponder timeless biblical principles and worship an eternal God, that many aspects of the Christian life are going to require a lot more waiting than our earthbound nature can appreciate. Patience is indeed a core Christian virtue, but unfortunately there are no quick-and-easy steps to acquiring it.

Patience is typically forged in us by God’s Spirit through the furnace of extended trials and protracted deprivation. Those chronic pains are part of God’s curriculum to bolster that needed farsightedness and eternal perspective that cause us to see our existence firmly in the hands of our transcendent God. They force us to understand that reality is bigger than today and tomorrow. They help us to learn something of God’s intricate, wise and overarching plan.

So when your help is delayed, the pay-off is postponed, your joy is deferred, or that earnestly sought vindication is slow in coming, remember that amid the discomfort your muscles of endurance are being strengthened and enlarged. You can be certain that God is at work in you to foster more of the patience we Christians so desperately need.