What Patience Is For

Picture a bill with your name on it that is months overdue, and yet no letter about it has ever come.

You may know that feeling from the inside. There is something you have been doing, or not doing, for a long time, and nobody has found out. The marriage held and the job survived. Somewhere in the quiet you did the sum and reached a verdict: it must not be as serious as people said, or something would have happened by now.

Paul is writing to a man who judges other people for the very things he does himself, 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?" Paul names three riches there: goodness, forbearance and longsuffering. Forbearance means holding back, choosing not to do what could be done. Longsuffering means staying patient for a long time. And leadeth means that God is guiding you somewhere. So the silence you have noticed has a purpose and a direction. To treat it as though God does not care is exactly what despise means here. Peter says the same thing to people who complained that God's promise was slow: the Lord "is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish."

The next verse says what has been building in the meantime: "But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath." Something has been piling up during the quiet, and you have been the one adding to it. Yet the quiet itself is God's kindness, holding the door open for you. So go and settle the matter nobody has asked you about. Confess it to God and make it right with anyone you have wronged. Do it today, while nothing is forcing you, and let the goodness of God lead you home.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 98 is Nailed to the Cross (Colossians 2:13-14).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two