PATIENCE

Hanging in there with Hard-to-Love People. Usually we think of patience as perserverance through the most trying of circumstances. Hurry Up and Wait. To most of us, patience is what we need when our schedules do not align with life. We dig deep for patience when we are in a hurry and get into the express lane at the super market only to discover the customer ahead of us has 20 items instead of 7 and is using a check instead of cash and the check is not ready.

But this is not the kind of patience addressed in the Bible's fruits list. The word in the list actually means patience with people. It is patience with who people are, and what they do that might bother or even offend us. This kind of patience is sucking in our breath when our husband returns from the store with the wrong kind of cereal when we had specifically written down the name for him. This kind of patience is listening to a lonely friend who drones on and on about her life but shows little interest in ours.

Patience is hanging in there with hard-to-love people sometimes to the point of forgiveness, but always to the point of love.

Patience doesn't mean slapping on a nice smile and ignoring the reality of how we feel. When there is a bright orange stain in the middle of our cream-colored carpet, we can walk around it or cover it with a throw rug, but it is still there. Living as if it is not there won't do much for us or for those around us. Emotions of pain and hurt in response to the offenses of others need to be processed and experienced because we are, by nature, emotional human beings. To deny such feelings is to deny who we are.

The naked truth about patience is that in order to have it, we must ask for it and cooperate with God in its growth in our relationships. We have to allow God to grow this and all the fruits in us. Patience seems to be one of the the tough-to-grow fruits.

What does it look like to cooperate with God in the growth of patience? Sometimes patience might look like saying a prayer for the person who is bugging us. We might be pushed to love someone who is very hard to love because he or she has wounded us. There are occasions when we find patience leading us to forgive a person for a something that hurt us very deeply.

Patience is a spiritual fruit that grows from the soil of our humanity. As we experience unwelcome wounds from people, God can grow his fruit in our hearts and empower us to respond to such hurt with Patience.

Be Patient, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 4:2

Be a Christ Follower.