Recently I have been reworking my categories on this blog site. Now you can easily find posts ordered by scripture reference. If for example you want to find out what I have written about ‘1 Corinthians 13:1’ you just click on the category.
As I have been working on my categories I realised that I have had a good number of posts on patience so far. So today I am going to conclude this section.
For some time I wanted to write a post based on the rendering of the King James Version. Where other translations say: “Love is patient”, the KJV has: “Love suffereth long”.
You may agree with me that being patient at least at times implies suffering. You just bear certain reactions or activities of others. You refrain from retaliating.
As you seek to assess or fathom how another person might feel about things, you dislike you perhaps allow some emotional disturbance into your own life. As you refuse hasty judgments or bias to govern your thoughts, you allow things to touch and affect yourself. This may be uncomfortable. Trying to look at things from somebody else’s point of view can be hard and a real challenge at times.
Whenever you feel with others, who have particular needs, you kind of allow their suffering into your own hemisphere of emotions. Now the question is how far will you go on that? Where are your personal limits?
St. Paul here says: “Love suffereth long”. If we were to be governed by that kind of love, this would imply being pretty consistent in our feeling with others.
One way to learn this kind of love is prayer. You place other people’s needs before God. You keep in mind that God is almighty. He has ways to help we may not even think of.
As you pray and intercede for other men and women you will slowly learn to look at them with God’s eyes and from His perspective. In prayer you begin to contemplate God’s love for others.
