Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Patience...

Someone has said, “You can do anything if you have the patience.  You can carry water in a sieve if you wait till it freeze".  Henry Ford said,” Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears”.

Have you ever noticed how long we wait when we go out to have dinner?  We wait for the menu.  We wait to place our order.  We wait for our food.  We wait for the check.  And finally we wait for the opportunity to pay the check.  Then the restaurant has the audacity to refer to the one who addresses all of this activity as the waiter! 

I don’t know about you but I need help at times with patience.  We all need to be more like the little boy in a department store.  He was at the end of an escalator watching the railing as it went around.  Finally, a salesman came by and asked him, “Son, are you lost?”  The boy replied, “No sir, I am just waiting for my gum to come back.”  We need that kind of patience. 

One of the most blessed fruits of the Spirit is patience.  The Bible describes it as longsuffering.  It is a word which means “long tempered”. 

In his book, “Is it Worth Dying For?” Dennis Brio takes a physician’s approach to patience.  As a cardiologist, Dr. Brio argued that hot reactions “Respond to every frustrating situation with angry stress, which constricts their coronary arteries.  If the condition persists, and one continues to handle matters in such a way, it can ultimately lead to heart trouble and even heart disease.   He counseled people to be “cool reactors” to alleviate stress and future health problems.  He was basically advising them to be patient.

Much of life requires patience.  A Palestinian   farmer sowed seed in the ground and received no rain at all much of the year.  The field would turn brown.  They had no irrigation.  Dependence on rain was crucial.  An early rain would come in October.  Then it would not rain again in March or April.  His crops were out of his control.

 James in his Epistle writes, “See how the farmer waits expectantly for the precious harvest from the Lord.  See how he keeps up his patient vigil over it until it receives the early and later rain”.  Then James says, “So you also must be patient.”

Patience is a virtue.  Possess it if you can, seldom found in a woman, never found in a man.
Patience-get it.  The life you save might be your own.
 
See ya Sunday!
Pastor

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