02.02.09
Need a Little Patience
Recently I read a post by my friend Jonathan Brink called With Great Patience . I found myself profoundly touched by this piece as it really struck home with some situations that I have been dealing with. I would suggest that if you haven’t read Jonathan Brink’s blog before, that you should check it out.
My friend Jonathan runs a ministry call Thrive Ministries . It is focused on bringing people back into relationship with one another as God truly intends it. He refers to it by the term communitas. In a way, many of my recent posts have been focused on my own struggles to come into communitas with several people around me. His post reminds me of how we can get caught up in being worried about “defending” ourselves instead of reaching out in love. His comments about how we build fortresses and walls that we think will protect us but in truth really isolate us and keep us away from what we are truly searching for. Relationship.
There was one phrase he used that really struck me and I think this is where many of us fail in this pursuit of communitas or relationship with others.
When someone reveals their brokenness in a way that affects the rest of the community, the natural impulse is to correct and to rebuke, even in love. We get the first half of Paul’s words. They’re empowering and important. But do we also include the words, “With great patience.”
I realized today that when someone doesn’t get it, it requires us to love even more. And we don’t like that, do we? We want relationships to be easy and fun. But grace has no end. God isn’t sitting up there wondering if He should break trust with us. He’s not wondering, “When are these people going to get it already?” His love is this insane ability to stay in trust with us even in our brokenness, even when we don’t get it.
I was stunned as I read that when someone doesn’t get it, it requires us to love even more. I knew this to be true but I wondered how I personally got so off track. I know I don’t like that. I want to be right. I want to win. I want to be heard. Yet that isn’t the example that God gives us.
Isn’t that what Christianity is really about? Relationships… both with our God and with others fostered by our love and service to one another.
