Longsuffering.

Longsuffering.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about taking time to care about the people around us and showing them they matter –this past week, I was really task-oriented, and I honestly wanted to chew up the people around me. I didn’t want to be nice, or smile –I just wanted to get my list of things done. Nothing –and nobody- was going to stand in the way of my promising accomplishment. In the back of my head, I knew my sudden determination was just a mask for a desire that none burst my bubble of desired solitude. Whatever happened to joy? Whatever happened to patience? Whatever happened to love?

A couple days later my supervisor shared with the staff a devotional about not forgetting the people that surround us, even when we are swamped with work, just wanting to please our boss and getting ‘ir done. Then I received a letter from a family member that moved me to dwell on the sad fact that it is easy to forget those that matter through the busyness of life.

This morning, I noticed in a horse her beautiful, sweet, servant-hearted look in her eye and mentioned it to friends with me. One of them agreed and described it as “longsuffering.” Later, on my way home, I couldn’t get the word out of my head. Longsuffering –such a powerful word when we think about it. It reminds me a lot of the often quoted “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away (from I Corinthians 13). No wonder it made it to the ranks of the Fruit of the Spirit! It’s one of the things I should be becoming more and more. That’s what I should be more and more towards my family, my friends, my roommate, my co-workers…strangers. That’s how God is toward us –toward me.

Longsuffering.