Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 98 · April 8
What Patience Is For
“Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”
An account with your name on it, months overdue, and no letter has ever come.
You know the situation from the inside. There is something you have been doing, or not doing, for a long time now. Nobody found out. The marriage held. The job survived. And somewhere in the quiet you did the sum and came out with a verdict: this must not be as serious as they said, or something would have happened by now.
Paul is writing at a man who judges other people for the very things he is doing, and he stops him with a question. Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? Three words for patience stacked one on another. Forbearance is a holding back, a deliberate withholding of what could be done. Leadeth is the word for taking a person somewhere by the hand. The silence has an intention inside it and a direction, and mistaking it for indifference is exactly what despise means here. Peter says the same when people complain the promise is slow: the Lord is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish.
Verse five says what has been accumulating in the meantime. After thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath. Something has been building during the quiet, and you have been the one adding to it. So go and settle the account nobody has asked you about. Do today, with nothing forcing you, what you would be doing this afternoon if you had been found out on Tuesday.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 98 is Nailed to the Cross (Colossians 2:13-14).