Patience

“Love is patient…”
1 Co 13:4

Love is the point where eternity and time make a connection; it is the precious thing that gives meaning to time and makes it stretch into timelessness. All things instant are confined in time and will vanish with time. Love is patient because it is eternal, which is the only thing on earth worth keeping. The thing that is worth keeping does take great patience to keep. If we consider love valuable, we will devote time and energy to its upkeep.

“Love is patient…”

We seem to spend a lot of time and energy earning what we can’t keep and taking the things that we can’t lose for granted. “I need to work hard to advance my career and make a good living and, as far as my wife and children are concerned, well, they will always be there.” This is true to many people.

We seem to have a great deal of patience working on a project or pursuing a deal, but we appear to have a short fuse in dealing with our loved ones. We always treat our guests with courtesy and are quite impolite to the ones in our own household. We may build a great career in the end, but end up losing the ones we love.

What’s truly worthwhile is worth cultivating. We will leave all things behind except love and we will take nothing with us but love at our death. How much time and energy do we spend daily in building up love with our loved ones? Very little indeed.

“What is there to cultivate?” you ask.

“We see, but we don’t perceive.” I heard this from a radio program. Love seems to be so abundant; therefore it becomes less valuable. Is this so? Can we deem oxygen and water less valuable because they are so abundant? Love is vital to our existence and a total necessity to our well-being. Shouldn’t we invest our intelligence, time, and energy cultivating and developing it?

“We are just an old married couple,” somebody said to me when I encouraged him to put more time into nurturing his love for his wife. Love waxes cold within a marriage not by nature, but by negligence. Gold shines just as bright even if it ages, but it may rust for lack of polishing. People are bored by love for lack of true understanding and appreciation of love. God is love. Will we ever be bored by God? If so, heaven will be a very boring place and eternity will indeed be giant slum of boredom and disappointment.

Love is patient because it is timeless. I may not be able to bring it to complete fruition, but I can always wait; I may never be able to make it perfect, but I can continue to work on it even when I am no more. May we all be patient in cultivating love, for the best is yet to come.