Skip to main content

Waiting with Patience


            The virtue of patience can only be experienced in the period of waiting.  How will you ever become patient if you are never given the opportunity to wait?
            Our Lord is the giver of holy patience.  Patience is not a gift that we beg God to give us.  Most of our prayers are about ending the period of waiting we are currently living.  Only the Giver of Life values the gift of patience, and He does not wait for us to ask to receive. 
            Advent is a season of exploring the virtue of patience.  It is a brief exercise in recognizing the holy goodness of the wait.  In Advent we are forced to wait four Sundays before we arrive at the joy of Christmas.  The gift of Advent is that when we allow our souls to sink deeply into the joy of waiting, Christmas becomes more fulfilling.  We don’t have to face the reality that a perfect Christmas morning is not created by all the frills, smells and presents that world insists will make us happy.  Rather the meaning of Christmas is the fulfillment of what our souls most need—a Savior—and the promise that He will return as surely as He came the first time, after the nation of Israel’s long wait.
            James 5:7 says:  Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains.  Acceptance is the key to waiting with patience.  Just as a farmer waits on the seasons he knows will come before the valuable crop, so we wait through the seasons of Advent knowing that Jesus came the first time as a babe and will return as the Savior of the world.
            Advent has much to teach about holy patience.  We must be patient with ourselves.  It feels impossible to tend to our souls in the midst of the pressures piled up because of Christmas.  We are forced to learn patience with the increased crowds of people who flood into the roads and shopping centers in an effort to make Christmas what they are told it should be.  We are drawn to share the experience of Christmas with family members in intimate settings that often challenge our patience in accepting the differences between family members.
            Let’s plant the seeds of waiting at Advent together by tending to our souls through prayer and meditation.  I believe it will lead to a blessed, holy patience with yourself, others and God.  The lesson of holy patience can serve you throughout the new year.
Copyright © 2015.  Deborah R Newman teatimeforyoursoul.com  All Rights Reserved.

           

Tea Time for Your Soul Daily Devotions for Advent available now on Kindle Direct:

Product Details

Soul Transformation through Advent: Devotions for Advent through Epiphany

Nov 22, 2015
by Dr. Deborah Newman

Kindle Edition


Subscribers read for free.Learn more.

Auto-delivered wirelessly

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess (Deuteronomy 11:8).   I decided through tears that I would go on

Day Nine - Journey's End

    I didn't think I could write today, but do to bad weather we now have extra time at the airport. Today we looked over the model city and I can't believe all I have learned. Some of the excavations since the model was completed reveal differences in what they built in the model. What amazed me was that I could see what wasn't where I expected based on what I experienced. Here is a wide view of the Model City which is 1:5 scale.  It was created by a Jewish man who wanted his son to understand what Jerusalem was once like.  Someone said that if you didn't see Jerusalem during the time of Herod the Great, you have never seen a beautiful city.  Do you understand what I mean about how grand this Temple was?            Next we saw the Dead Sea Scrolls.  I learned a lot about the Essenes.  They lived like monks today.  Like Jesus, they were not happy with the way the Temple was being run and they came to the desert to offer truly holy sacrifices, untainted by the mismanage

Not Treating Others as Their Sins Deserve

            Turning the other cheek has become a Christian cliché.   These beautiful and penetrating words of Jesus are minimized when we humans try to apply them without God.   The best we can do to achieve Jesus’ description in our power is repress our anger about the way someone sins against us.   This only serves to make us look stupid to the world, creates ulcers, or causes an unplanned, embarrassing, public explosion of anger.   Jesus spoke these words and many others like them to invoke the spiritual understanding that it is impossible to live out His directions for our lives without Him.   He has no intention of our trying to take His work on in our flesh.             It happens all the time in marriages and other relationships where one person who thinks they need to be a certain way to please God centers his or her relationships around keeping peace.   I don’t believe that kind of turning the other cheek is very pleasing to God.               No, God is inviting us