“When I think of the patience of God, I am overwhelmed that He has suffered my ways so long.”
He Is Patient. And It Should Undo Us
Of all God’s attributes, patience may be the one we take most for granted.
Think about your own life for a moment. The number of times you have been warned, called back, given another chance. The moments you walked away, drifted, chose something smaller than what you were made for, and still found yourself standing, still found grace waiting when you returned. Most of us, if we are honest, have worn out the patience of God a dozen times over by lunch on any given Tuesday.
And yet.
Peter’s words in his second letter are addressed to people who were beginning to wonder whether God had forgotten his promises. The world seemed unchanged. Christ had not yet returned. Some were beginning to mock, where is this God you talk about? Peter’s answer is striking. God is not slow. God is patient. And the patience is specifically toward you. We don’t know how irritating and flimsy we can be. We go back on words and promises like it is nothing and yet we blame him. As many people have said many times, “The Audacity”!
The Hebrew word for patience, when used of God, carries the idea of being long in anger, literally, being slow to get to the end of your rope. It is not passive tolerance. It is active restraint. God, who sees everything, who has every right, who has been provoked infinitely more than we have been provoked by anyone in our lives. holds back. Not because he is indifferent, but because he is giving time for return, for repentance, for the heart to come home.
This ought to do two things to us.
First, it should fill us with gratitude. If God operated on the timeline that justice alone would demand, most of us would not still be here, at least not in the shape we are in. Every ordinary morning is, in a real sense, an act of divine patience.
Second, it should make us patient with others. One of the most common failures in human relationships is expecting from other people a standard we ourselves have been graciously excused from meeting. The person who has received enormous patience and extends almost none is not someone who has truly understood what they have been given.
God’s patience is not permission to take him for granted. It is an invitation, patient, open-armed, unhurried, to come back to the one who has been waiting for you all along.
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