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Patience

             The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (II Peter 3:9)

                Have you considered how patient God is with you? Today’s verse specifically mentions that God is patient with us in waiting so that everyone can come to repentance. That is of great importance. But if God is willing to wait patiently for us to come to repentance, does it make sense that He should be impatient about everything, or anything else? This isn’t to say that He never says, “Now!” But just for a moment, today, think about it. What are the things that elude you as a Christian? Does your prayer life lack? Do you worship/praise as you should? How about sharing your faith? Is giving hard? Have you failed to be the Christian, employee, citizen, parent, sibling, spouse, friend, etc. that you should be? In short, do you see yourself as a disappointment to God?

                I’m not going to say that you’re not a disappointment because we faced that yesterday. Today’s point is that even if/though you are a disappointment, God is patient. Most of us don’t expect a child to be potty-trained three days after they’re born. We don’t lose patience with an American child who can’t read and discuss Les Misérables in French by the age of three. But we see ourselves as adults, and therefore, supposedly, well past the age when we should have mastered by now. The fact that God might have to be patient is embarrassing. But what if the reality is that we’re doing as well as He expects us to do, or that we’re in the process of learning the lesson He’s teaching at just the time He expected to teach it? What if, were He to now show patience with us, He would be failing as our God?

                Father, thank You for Your patience. You demonstrate it in giving us time to come to repentance. You also show it in giving us time to do things that we think we should have mastered, but haven’t. Help us to be patient with Your patience and with our progress.

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