Patience ...

Wednesday, July 6, 2016. Sometimes we need patience. Sometimes we are in trouble, we are stretched and pressed. Sometimes life is not easy. We can over-react. We can try to find easy solutions or search conflict. We are tempted to be angry. Some might even start to be violent, since aggressions rise when you are treated unfairly.

Trouble …

There are so many things which can cause trouble. There is ignorance. Some people just do not think, they are following their own goals and there might be some side effects which they just ignore, which cause trouble for other people. Sometimes you might be in the way, and you are attacked just because some people feel you hinder them and their goals.

Of course, you can also be a cause of trouble, and trouble comes back to you. If you are ignorant yourself, and then get criticized, that can cause trouble for you. You can be the source of your own trouble.

There is trouble when people with gifts in some area carry out things which need other gifts. It causes trouble when you are talented in science, but work in management. It can cause trouble when you are a gifted engineer, but work in management. It can also cause trouble when you work in management but are more talented to work in science or engineering.

Patience and Endurance …

Reading the letter “Colossians” in the New Testament, we hear about trouble, but also about spiritual wisdom and understanding, about endurance and patience with joy. Let us read these lines, which try to encourage us in particular when we are in times of trouble:

9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col 1, )

The New Testament has much to say how to grow in the spirit. God is there with his power - which is first of all a power of the holy spirit. I believe that we have to start here, start in the spirit. Let us follow him, turn to him, search his advice and his wisdom, search his ways … Then we will find his wisdom, we will find his joy. And we will find his help as well … when time has come. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts