Character-building Patience – the sequel

Last time I mentioned that patience is a community thing. We have to be patient with circumstances. We may also have to be patient with others around us who are under the same pressures and perhaps not reacting so well as we are. Now our patience with others may have more benefits than just calming situations down. It may help remind someone of God’s wonderful patience with us. 

Has He not been patient? You and I owe our very existence to the patience of God. Without His millennia-long patience we would never even have come to birth! 

In 2 Peter 3 from verse 3 on we read that scoffers will come in the last days. “They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’” Peter reminds them how the sudden coming of the Great Flood shows us how swiftly God can act when He chooses. He goes on, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. … Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God? … [C]ount the patience of our Lord as salvation.” (ESV)

Each of us probably has a story of someone who blessed us by their patience towards us. In my case a memory strikes me from way back in 1967, and my unlikely benefactor was a gruff, ageing sergeant-major. I was a raw teenage cadet in the Combined Cadet Force, faced with passing my proficiency. Among other hoops I was required to jump through, I had to make the grade at target shooting. After a number of attempts with the .22 Lee Enfield rifle I had not yet reached the 60 marks needed. I approached our arthritic sergeant-major, seated at his desk at one corner of the safe end of the school rifle range, surrounded by a pile of cartridge boxes. 

“Please let me have another go, sir,” I begged. “That’s all very well, Demore, but these cartridges cost money – sixpence a time. We can’t be forever wasting them on you.” 

I must have looked pathetic and desperate enough to soften his resolve, however, and he gave me another chance. It paid off. On the crucial day I scored a creditable 71. In the end, though no soldier really, I achieved my proficiency. 

Without God’s incredible patience I would be a failure in far more important areas than not scoring enough bull’s-eyes on a rifle range. I would fail, for all eternity, to make it into heaven. That I can confidently “hope, by His good pleasure/safely to arrive at home” is down to at least two breathtaking facts: though I am essentially no different from the baying crowd who jeered as Jesus was crucified, He patiently endured a painful death to fulfil His Father’s salvation plan for the likes of me He puts up patiently with me though, day after day, my behaviour makes it look as though I’ve got nothing to be grateful to Him for. 

Put no strain on God’s patience. Your salvation depends on it. Instead, mirror it by being patient with someone else – it may depict God to them!