Daily Devotions
The Patience of Love
Reading for December 1: 1 Corinthians 9-11
Love is patient...
1 Corinthians 13:4
Patience is a selfless act. The word in this verse is translated "long-suffering" in most Bibles. Patience is a willingness to suffer.
- Patience is a mother who is willing to get up at 3:00 a.m. to feed her baby.
- Patience is a father who goes to the same boring job every day to put food on the table.
- Patience is a spouse forgiving when their heart has been broken.
- Patience is an evangelist who asks 1000 people, "Will you study with me?" before one agrees to do it.
- Patience is a shepherd who keeps hunting for the one sheep who is lost.
C. S. Lewis wrote:
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
God of patience, teach us to suffer long with others as you have with us.
