Patience

Romans 15:5

"May God, who gives this patience and encouragement, help you live in complete harmony with each other, as is fitting for followers of Christ Jesus."

At the beginning of this year, when we were all making resolutions that we are bound to break 4-6 weeks later, I had a friend post something on Facebook that gave me pause. She mentioned that instead of making a ton of resolutions that she can't/won't keep she was going to chose a word for the year. This made total sense to me. I have tried year, after year to make the same resolutions last in my life, but I continue to fail. So I thought about that for a little while and I realized that I had the perfect word for my life, that word is Patience. Now, my mother always used to tell us as kids that she prayed for patience once and ended up with an ADD kid, so be careful what you pray for! As a kid, I'd always taken that joking advice to heart, but now as an adult; I feel like I might have somehow cheated myself. The Bible tells us that patience is a fruit of the Spirit, "But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:22 and 23). Now I don't know about you, but I feel like love, joy, and peace; at the very least, are GREAT gifts. and if these things are gifts, then wouldn't it stand that patience too, is a gift?

Let's start with a definition of patience. Dictionary.com defines patience this way: quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence: to work with patience. to be fair, that is just one of the definitions they listed, but it seemed to be the one that defined the gift of patience to me most. Something about a quiet, steady perseverance seems to scream Jesus to me. When I'm reading in the gospels about Jesus, I just FEEL His peace and perseverance seep into me. In fact, a lot of the book of Proverbs seems to talk to the even-tempered care. Hmm...as I'm writing this, I seem to be learning more and more about my special word for the year! I once did a study on "controlling your words" based on the Bible. It wasn't a book, it was just me highlighting and underlining all of the times that controlling what you say was mentioned in the Bible. It turns out that most of these references, well at least the ones that I remember anyway, are in Palms and Proverbs, so I'm looking at the even-tempered care from that prospective and seeing how patience would be a huge plus in controlling my words as well.

I just discovered a great illustration on the gift of patience. This gift is Amish Friendship Bread. I've never had this bread before today, but a co-worker handed me a starter kit last week along with the instructions. I was not prepared to "babysit" this bread, but I knew my husband (who is the cook in the family anyway) liked the concept, so I reluctantly agreed to take the starter bag. My husband was, indeed, eager to make the bread, so we followed the instructions everyday, almost making it a game in my head so that I would remember to do it. Last night was our "baking" night, so he added the final ingredients and off to the oven it went. it smelled so wonderful while it was baking, but I was just too full to eat any of it last night. My husband, being the sweetheart that he is, put a piece in my lunch box for a snack. I just discovered said snack about 20 minutes ago, and toasted and buttered it up. The very first bite that I took was heavenly! I LOVE this bread, and I'm reminded that I didn't even want to be bothered with it to begin with. However, my husband's patience rubbed off on me and I received one of the best gifts of bread today! What a beautiful picture of patience! What starts off as a gooey, slimey mess turns into a wonderful treat with just a little bit of patience (and ingredients) added!

The same could be said for my life, what starts out as an ooey, gooey mess; when added to a little bit of Heavenly patience becomes a Master Peice in the eyes of our Creator. So now, not only am I praying for the faith of a mustard seed, I'm praising God for his patience in me as well!