Patience that Runs

We are an impatient generation. The average public cost for red light running alone in the US exceeds $14 billion per year - 207,000 crashes, 178,000 injuries, and 921 fatalities attributed to the hurry up mentality that dominates us and saves us on average about 50 seconds. We are in a race according to Hebrews 12:1 ("let us run with endurance the race that is set before us") but one that is tempered with patience. James 5:8 tells us, "You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand." So how do we run with patience?

George Matheson wrote, "We commonly associate patience with lying down. We think of it as the angel that guards the couch of the invalid. Yet there is a patience that I believe to be harder -- the patience that can run. To lie down in the time of grief, to be quiet under the stroke of adverse fortune, implies a great strength; but I know of something that implies a strength greater still: it is the power to work under stress; to have a great weight at your heart and still run; to have a deep anguish in your spirit and still perform the daily tasks. It is a Christ-like thing! The hardest thing is that most of us are called to exercise our patience, not in the sickbed but in the street." To wait is hard, to do it with "good courage" is harder!"