Active Pateince

Well, after a full month off from my discipline of the Ready, Set, Worship! ritual, I have dutifully returned! Thanks for your patience as I’ve taken the holidays off. Speaking of patience – a nice segue to be sure – read the following quotes on the topic of patience.

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young? - Paul Sweeney

Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead. - Mac McCleary

Patience is the ability to count down before you blast off. - Author Unknown

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. - Franklin P. Jones

Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience. - George-Louis de Buffon

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. - John Quincy Adams

Patience is the companion of wisdom. - St. Augustine

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees? - William Shakespeare, Othello, 1604

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health. - Michel de Montaigne

One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life. - Chinese Proverb

And my personal favorite…

Patience is also a form of action. - Auguste Rodin

I’m not so sure we believe this last one, for when we are patient, we tend to believe it to be inactivity, passiveness, weakness, and idleness. Yet, when it comes to the biggest things, more patience – an active patience – seems to be required: the perfect diamond, the well-raised child…the salvation of the world

As you ready yourself for worship this week, think about the virtue of patience in the Christian life. Meditate on how being patient in a matter has actually been a form of action rather than inactivity. Contemplate on the amount of patience God displayed in bearing with the world before the coming of Christ, and the patience He still exercises today with our own inability to see the Light clearly. Pray that God would grant you the full understanding of patience…grasping it as His activity!

Resounding Themes:

A Message of Hopefulness
Salvation Is God’s and In His Time
Omnipresence of God in all activities

Getting READY to Worship

Ready, Set, READ

Colossians 1:3-14

Ready, Set, MEDITATE

- As Paul writes, what tone do you sense in his opening thoughts? How did they become Christians in the first place? What does he ask for them in their faith? Indeed what greater thing has happened because they believed?

- What does Paul mean when he tells them that they understood the gospel in ALL its truth? What might be a half-gospel, or less full gospel? How might they be protected from such falsity?

- Paul uses the images of strength and endurance when he talks about the idea of patience. Do these sound like wimpy, passive activities? In fact, what does he say the end of these patient acts is?

- How have you been actively patient in the past? Have you ever looked at patience in a negative, unfruitful light? What part of life/faith do we miss when forego being patient?

Ready, Set, PRAY

Holy Lord, You are good and Your love endures today. What patience You have shown to the nations! From impatient Israel to us today, You have exercised both relentment and overwhelming benevolence – both measures of your great love and patience.

And so, Father, we pray that in Your great power and love, You would grant us Your patience, as we convince the world of Your supremacy and await the future glory that is to come! Lord, make us active in prayer, in salvation, and in patience. In Christ’s name. AMEN.

Ready, Set, WORSHIP!