Patience is a Virtue

...or at least that's what everyone keeps telling me. In the Church Calendar, this marks the day when the disciples and Christ's other followers sat in despaired waiting. They had no clue what they should do but to go home and resume fishing. I can't imagine how agonizing this horrible Saturday must have been. And we only recognize this as being one day--in reality it should have been two ("three days and three nights in the belly of the earth").

I have lots of trouble being patient. Anyone who is reading this that knows me at all is probably thinking, "well, DUH!", but that isn't the point. It still needs to be stated. I don't do well "just waiting". I want to get things done; I want things to happen on my time schedule. And often times they don't--I'd go as far as to say that they usually don't. And that's frustrating.

Patience is that virtue in which I become content that my discontentments will either be met (outside circumstances change) or changed (inward dispositions change). It is the virtue in which I become satisfied that God has an excellent and loving plan for me (Romans 8:28), and thus those things that to me seem incomplete or frustrating need not be so.

"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32, ESV)

Luke