Hello my adorable Thinkers!
This year I have been coming back over and over again to studying about the word “patience”. I wrote about this subject once before here. I decided this week to see if I could derive a definition from the first place patience is mentioned in scripture, like I did for this study of faith that I did. When looking at patience in scripture, the Hebrew word that is usually translated as “longsuffering, patient, or slow” is arek (אָרֵךְ). The first time that this word is used is when Moses is told to remake the stone tablets and God proclaims His Name to Moses. Exodus 34:6-7 “Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth; who keeps faithfulness for thousands, who forgives wrongdoing, violation of His Law, and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, inflicting the punishment of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.'”
So in essence, what is patience? Patience is a part of God’s name, meaning God is inherently patient by nature. There are many examples throughout Scripture of God being patient showing that this is true. One example is how He gave the Children of Israel chance after chance, which is recounted in Nehemiah 9:16-17. What does this mean to us? We are called to be holy as God is holy in Leviticus 19:2 which means that we should seek to have more of God’s nature evident in our lives.
Patience has always been an attribute that I have struggled with. I always want to take action to make things happen, get my hands in the dirt so to speak. Although there is a time for action, a lot of life is waiting and learning what we need to learn here. God continues to work on me, slowly, day-by-day helping me to see that He will always bring things to pass, and if you wait for it, it will be sweeter than if you force it.
Lets all work together on letting go, and consistently giving the control to God. He is the one who knows best what we need, and when we need it.
Until next time! ~The Pondering Panda
P.S. This is a post that was mostly written over a year ago and is something that I continue to learn. Hopefully you can be inspired just like I was when reading this again.
Panda's Ponderings 