Today’s Reflection by Mark D. Roberts (via The High Calling) is entitled, “I’m Glad Love Is Patient, But Could You Please Hurry Up and Change?“His lead grabbed this Not So Fast girl:
I recently read a fascinating book by James Gleick. It’s called Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (Pantheon, 1999). Gleick shows how our lives have been sped up by technology and the cultural shifts it has spawned. “We have reached the epoch of the nanosecond,” notes the author, “This is the heyday of speed.” Gleick adds, “We humans have chosen speed and we thrive on it—more than we generally admit. Our ability to work fast and play fast gives us power. It thrills us.” He supplies an illustration that I found particularly telling and ironic: “[One doesn’t buy] deep-blue denim jeans with their dye stiff as tin, resigned to wearing them for a year before achieving a faded ‘look.’ One buys them prewashed, prefaded, and maybe prepatched at the knees or seat. Who can wait for nature to take its course?” Actually, the most recent pair of jeans purchased by one of my teenaged children did not even have patches. It featured several unpatched holes!
My kids want those ripped up, pre-aged, quick-ripped jeans, too…and they want them now.This speedy mindset sidesteps situations where we might have to practice and develop patience.Yet, love is patient. Roberts says:
[T]he Greek verb translated in verse 4 as “is patient” is makrothumeo. It is built with the word makros, which means “long” in distant or time. Patience is the ability to wait, often for a long time, for what you want. It assumes a sense of peace in waiting, the very thing that often departs when we’re forced to wait for someone.
Patience. Waiting. Peace.Three words that counter our culture of speed; three qualities that help us learn what love is.A friend of mine was married on Saturday–in fact, my husband was one of the groomsmen.Our friend waited many years for the right girl to come along. He waited patiently, with hope. In fact, when he moved into his small house several years ago, he wasn’t dating anybody. Nevertheless, he painted and decorated every room in neutral colors so that one day, when he married, his future wife could add her colors and flair.That time has come. He is married, and for their wedding colors, the bride chose a rich pink.
I think that today, as I ponder the joyous wedding of our friend, pink is for me the color of patience; it’s the color our friend waited for all these years with patience, hope, peace…and love.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.(1 Cor. 13:4, emphasis mine)
Hi Ann! It’s kind of funny that many people counsel not to pray for patience, because you know what happens then… But, if patience is a character quality (and fruit of the Spirit) that we want to develop, we should have no problem to pray for it and “consider it all joy” when we experience the trials that come as a consequence. Not an easy sell, but worth the price. Blessings!
Thanks, Ann. Great post and great point on our love of speed. Yes, I can see that in me, and true today at work (and most everyday with my work). Patience, waiting, peace- and your words around that- thanks! Helpful.
Beautiful color; beautiful post about waiting in the Fast-paced world of ours. I love the idea that someone could wait so patiently for the person God had planned to complement his life!
Blessings,
Janis
Another great post on the virues of slowing down, Ann. And I think I may have to read that book, too. Patience is a skill and a God-given gift that I need to work on a bit more.
Smilin’