Patient and Kind

We cannot define it as some abstract idea - love is recognised by what it does.

So Paul tells us, "Love is patient and kind" (1 Cor. 13.4).

The Greeks thought of patience as "having a long spirit". To us, that is a curious, yet helpful, phrase.

Some people we know seem to have a rather short fuse. Their impatience flares up in anger whenever their own plans or ideas are delayed or frustrated.

The "instant world" in which we live breeds its own forms of impatience. We can have instant milk, instant coffee and tea, instant meals, instant finance… instant everything! We live for now. It is little wonder that, in the area of sexual morality, many growing up in today's world have been saying, "Why wait? If there is any good in this, we must have it now!"

But that is not love! Love is patient.

It is when we focus life on ourselves, on achieving our own goals and ambitions, that we are short on the fuse and impatient. But when we have the love that really cares for others, we will seek to understand their needs and be patient. Sometimes it will not even be possible to help a person at some point of need that is just so obvious to us. Sometimes help cannot be given until someone is ready to receive it. But what are we about - seeking our own personal satisfaction from giving help? or caring enough to wait?

Love is also kind.

Not only does it refrain from reacting angrily or impatiently, but it positively expresses itself in kindness. It seeks the highest good of others. So it reacts with goodness towards those who ill-treat it and gives itself in the service of others.

Love is patient and kind.

Jesus' story of the lost son in Luke 15 is a picture of the love of our Father God for us even when we wander away from him. It is also a graphic picture of the love that is patient and kind.

How that father loved his boy! When he first came and requested his share of the inheritance, the father must have realised what was going on in the lad's mind. But he was growing up. He couldn't keep on treating him as a child, making his decisions for him. His love for the boy meant that he wanted him to grow into a man.

Shortly the boy took all he had and went to a far country where many friends soon helped him to waste his money and left him destitute. Reduced to feeding pigs (the lowest occupation, in Jewish estimation), he came to see the folly of his ways. He had no claim on his father's love or sympathy - not only had he wasted his portion of the inheritance, but he had disgraced the family name as well - but perhaps his father would be willing to receive him back as a hired servant.

He had known his father's love, but had scarcely measured love's patience and kindness. How that father must have waited for his boy's return! Perhaps as time went by he wondered his wisdom in dividing his property. Perhaps he should have pressed harder for him to stay at home. Perhaps he should have sent a servant to keep check on his needs…

But love was watching and waiting, and saw him "while he was still a long way off". Love was ready to receive him and restore him.

Love is patient and kind.

This is not only God's love for us - it is also the kind of love he means us to have for others.

PRAYER: Eternal God, you are love. How you have been patient and kind toward me. You know what is best for me, yet you treat me and respect me as a person. Thank you for your patient Love that has sought me and brought me back home to you. Give me some of your strong true love, full of patience and kindness. In Jesus' name, Amen.

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