As streams of sweat and heavy breathing came about as I was jogging through the park today, God directed my thinking towards patience and how He has developed it in my life and is developing it in my life. I thought through all the years of plowing through the field of patience and how hard and frustrating, yet liberating and peaceful it has been over the years and even in my time here.
I began to come to a conclusion that in my own life, God uses urban areas to develop patience in different ways than he uses rural areas. I find that when walking through beautiful, God-created landscape, that God develops patience with myself as well as with his overall plan for my life. He's taught me through nature that his plan is perfect and that I just have to build patience in knowing that "he will carry it on to completion" (Phil 1:6). I learn that my timing is so short-sided to compared to the timing that God has for all things, including myself as His child.
Through working in a booming metropolis like Barcelona, you come in contact with so many people. There are crowds that are sometimes hard to push through, people taking their time getting things in a grocery store, people rushing to get on the Metro, people even being inconsiderate for others, or even friends not opening up as quickly as I'd like for them to. I find that in a big city, God has and is teaching me to have patience with people and even with people that I don't really know. Those that know me know that I can be a person that's always on the go and going quickly. To slow down is aggravating to me and I get really impatient. Thanks be to God that he is patient with me and if He can be patient with me, He can certainly teach me to be patient with others.
I remember a song as a kid that said "I can wait to have patience...because patience is a wonderful thing." Patience is a virtue, but it requires patience to develop patience. I will patiently wait for God to develop this further in my life.
Feel free to comment on this. Do you agree or disagree? What are you experiencing with Patience?
1 comment:
Hey man! Sounds like running is a good thing for you. :)
Patience for me comes through people, mainly giving grace when I know people can't, or don't know better. Say, people with disabilities. I find then that my patience is the greatest...and it's the least when I'm with people whom I feel are perfectly capable and should be "meeting my expectations."
Kind of like your rural/urban comparison. Rural is a little slow, easy to relax and wait. Urban is high paced, harder to wait.
Well, brother, I'll be praying for your patience this week. Happy one year!
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