Patience

My wife and I have three grandchildren.  This Sunday the youngest is to be dedicated at the church my son and his family attend.  My dad and brother came to town for the event.  It is kind of a big deal because this grandson is the fifth generation first born in our family with the same first name.  All of the family that is in town went out to eat tonight.  We went to a new restaurant at which my wife and I ate earlier this week.  It was very good and we asked the owner if they could handle a group of 13 tonight.  He assured me that if we called ahead they would be able to do that.  Not so much.

We called 45 minutes ahead as he asked and he told me to come in an hour and fifteen minutes.  When we arrived they were not ready and it was over an hour before we were seated.  New restaurant, packed, still learning how all the equipment and systems work, plus patrons who were not all that aware of what was going on conspired to make it a difficult wait.

Our three year old granddaughter observed, “It is hard to be patient.”  Nope, impossible.  Without the Holy Spirit it is impossible to be patient.  My experience with life tells me that the only way to make it through this world with some modicum of sanity is to engage in that journey with patience.  But on our own we are not very…

Galatians 5:22 lists patience as a part of the nine fold fruit of the Spirit.  In the past I have tried many applications to increase my patience with less than limited results.  Working on the fruit is a lot like treating symptoms and not the real disease.  We do not develop fruit.  The Spirit does in us.  That is why it is hard.  We get patience along with the other eight as a result of our walking in the Spirit.  Not as a result of working on the fruit.  It is a function of how closely we are walking with Him.

It is hard…