His Immense Patience

“The Christlike reaction to all that is maddening”

- J I Packer

Every interaction.  Every response.  Every moment.    It’s the ‘every’ that gets me.  I flick through the pages of the gospels again.  Every interaction is imbued with a steady patience.  Every response is rooted in a deep forbearance of the other.  Every moment is embraced with immense long-suffering.  

Every reaction to all that burdens.  To all that is broken.  To all that lies unresolved.  To all that is thoroughly inconvenient.  To all that is maddening.

My mind wanders further back in time - way back, to Abraham’s faltering moments and Jacob’s deceit.  To Moses’ anger, and those wilderness years.  To David’s infidelity, to Hezekiah’s double-mindedness, to everyone who became a beneficiary of the Lord’s patience.

It’s a patience that continually serves others.  It’s a forbearance that walks alongside others, dogged in its persistence and grace.  It’s an endurance that ultimately took Him from cradle to cross, forsaking the glories of heaven to endure the scorn and shame of calvary.

But it’s more than just what’s inscribed on the pages of history, for those back then.  His immense patience isn’t squirreled away in the past.  It’s active in the here and now.

His patience is for me.  His patience is for you.  Dear Christian, take hold of his patience towards you.  Marvel at it.  Marvel at Him.  For today, yesterday and forever, this is his posture towards you - one of ‘immense patience’.

Is there anything more beautiful?

‘Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen’