Love is Patient…

“Love is patient, love is kind…” (1 Corinthians 13:4a)

When Saint Paul undertakes to describe the characteristics of divine love, the first thing he writes is that love is patient and the second is that it is kind.

I was meditating on this recently because I know I am sometimes (more often than I’d like) impatient, and when I am, it inevitably results in my being unkind to someone around me.  Sometimes my unkindness is subtle, in judgemental thoughts and dismissive attitudes.  But sometimes (again, more often than I’d like), my impatience makes me outwardly snippy or sarcastic.  In a word, I become unkind. 

Impatience is a refusal to wait.  It’s a chafing against circumstances that call for me to be “long suffering,” that old fashioned word that describes what patience actually is.  If I excavate a little, I see that underneath my impatience I am refusing to suffer, short or long.  I see that I am doubting that God has a good purpose in this particular thing that he is allowing in my life right now.  I’m rejecting that it’s  part of the “all things” that he is able to use for my good (c.f., Romans 8:28-29).

I see too that I am pridefully judging that certain things “ought not” to be happening to me because they’re unpleasant: they interrupt me and my plans.  In a way, I’m positioning myself as a judge of God himself, or at least of his goodness and wisdom.   Rather than accepting all of God’s providence for me in each moment, I’m rejecting this circumstance because it is irritating to me.  Once again, the root of my fleshly demandingness about how life “should be” is operating.  While I want the end of the process of sanctification, that much-needed purification of my pride and selfishness, I often impatiently push away the means God is choosing to employ in a given moment.  

I sometimes think of the story of Mary and Martha.  Martha is “distracted” – pulled away from “the better portion”, which is the presence of Jesus and his words.  Her impatience to get the dinner done and on the table makes her rude and unkind to the very One she’s trying to serve. 

I can relate to Martha very easily.  I often prioritize my agenda and lose sight of what God might be doing in any given moment.   Jesus comes to dwell in me, in the “house” of my soul and body.  I must pray that I might be more attentive to his presence, especially as hidden in the people around me (Matthew 25:40).  I pray that I might learn more often to put aside my personal agenda in order to receive from Him what He longs to lavish upon me – his wisdom, his peace and most especially his love.