A Note on Patience.

Patience, patience, patience.  It is the most profoundly difficult in this life to be patient, particularly when we are continually bombarded by a vast cacophony of irritants and frustrations.  Having been an impatient man for the majority of my life I can say with confidence that I know a good deal about what patience is not.

For instance, I can see that patience is not sniping your spouse when he/she does something disagreeable.  It is also not uttering some snide comment when something becomes unbearably tedious.  And it is certainly not the act of screaming at the top of your lungs every foul obscenity you can think of when the guy in the large SUV in the lane next to you comes over into your lane without any signal and then flicks you off like you're the idiot (I speak purely hypothetically, of course).  No, patience is not any of these things or even any thing that may appear like any of these things.

Patience is something altogether different.  It is, at the very least, a perspective that is applied to every facet of life.  Patience is sort of like holding your hand in cold dish water to pull those gummy, slimy food scraps out of the sink–not a particularly pleasant job but when it needs to be done.  But this also is but a shadow of what patience is, because it only considers patience a matter of time while neglecting patience's greater matter: relationships.

Relationships are the breeding ground or the cemetery for patience, depending, ultimately, not on willingness but on love.  If we love, truly love the people around us and see them as God sees them then we will be patience not out of any humanitarian disposition or altruistic intention but because we will, at our hearts, love them.

In the end, this is what patience is all about.  It is a matter of love and needs to be learned and practice as such, knowing that all love is received and refined by God as He imparts it to human beings through Christ.  Therefore, the most patient thing we could ever do is to look to Christ and to love Christ at all times.