Maybe I should say, “When patience is tested,” but when you think about it, patience and grace go hand in hand. If I grow impatient with someone, I’m not really showing him or her much grace, am I?
Do you ever feel that way?
I will admit, my patience has been tried a lot more lately than in times past, though I’m not sure that I could ever admit to being a super patient person. My husband, on the other hand, is definitely Mr. Patience. He usually gives the benefit of the doubt, sees the good in everyone, and listens. I know, really? How did I manage to be blessed with a guy that listens when I talk? Or vent? Or just tell him about my day?
But even he has seen his frustration level rise lately, and I think it has a lot to do with a change in our culture more than a change in us. (Not saying we can’t improve in ourselves, but the culture has changed a lot in recent years.)
I think we would all admit that we live in a drive-through, instant-everything world, and we’ve lived this way for so long that as a culture, we start to feel entitled and impatient if things don’t go our way and “right now!” Even when we know we shouldn’t, we can let little things get to us. Our ability to live grace gets sorely tested sometimes, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile, Jesus tells us to come away and rest awhile. Take a break. Spend time with Him. Seek peace and pursue it! Peace, not impatience.
It’s easy to forget His admonition when we are on the phone for the third time with a company that can’t seem to get our bill straightened out or they lost our information, which prevents us from doing our job, or we want something delivered by a certain date and it doesn’t arrive on time. The list is endless.
Patience is tested when we get behind the wheel of the car and have to dodge people who weave all over the road because they can’t put down their cell phone. Or right in the middle of something important, the power goes out because someone drove into a pole or the electric company hasn’t been able to protect their wires from animals that chew through them. Yeah, I admit it. I get testy when the power goes out for such reasons. And then I hear about true devastation where people can’t even find clean drinking water and think – “What are you complaining about?”
My impatience isn’t grace.
Grace is extending patience to the person on the phone who can’t seem to get my bill right and responds with kindness to the person who lost my information and is holding up my ability to do my job.
Grace persists without anger. Grace forgives the person who mistreats us, though perhaps it is also grace to report the reckless driver lest they seriously hurt someone. Grace seeks peace. Grace pursues peace.
And it takes that time away with Jesus to find the grace we need to help us in trying times.
These things I’ve mentioned above are trivial tests of grace, but isn’t it the little things that tend to catch us at our worst? The truly horrifying things that are happening all over the world need the greatest grace of all, the help and love and all of the patience we can show to help those most in need. Yet it is in these hardest times that we tend to show the greater grace.
And blow up at the little things that shouldn’t take so long or be so trying. Maybe we lose our ability to show the grace of God to others over these smaller things when we have forgotten to take the time to receive it for ourselves.
“See to it that no one misses the grace of God.” Hebrews 12:15 NIV 1984
Like every gift and every quality of faith, the grace we are able to show others really is impossible to show consistently on our own. It takes God’s grace in us, living and active, for us to share that same grace with someone else.
God promised to give us grace whenever we had the need for it. (Hebrews 4:16)
May we remember (as I have to do often) to ask God for that grace when I feel it being tried once again. He never fails to grant it. I just have to stop and take time to ask for it.
