Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. 1 Corinthians 13:4 (TPT)

Love Is Large – Love Series – Part 2

Go to PART 1  |  PART 2  |  PART 3  |  PART 4  |  PART 5  |  PART 6  |  PART 7

Love is made manifest through patience and kindness. When you sink into this sort of love, it goes beyond smiling at the person behind the counter at your local grocery store (kindness) and waiting for your partner to get ready so you can go out (patience).

Patience.

It’s not waiting with a smile on your face or choosing not to be angry at the person in front of you who is taking FOREVER with their order… There’s a sense of endurance to it, personal responsibility; the refusal to rush and skim and ignore stories and details and lives.

Patience listens more than demands. It insists that there is more going on around us than the headlines tell us. It begs us to dig, to wait, to seek and keep on seeking. And in it's true form, patience is something that we need for ourselves more than others.

Why do we get frustrated when someone runs late, or doesn’t believe our truth, or can’t see the world the way we do?

Unmet expectations.

And perhaps some unrealistic and unkind expectations.

Be patient with yourself. Grace. Breathe. Rather than demand others think and believe and live and value the same way and things you do, listen to them. Look at them. Believe them. Journey with them.

Is it world repair you seek? Justice? Mercy? Cultural and political change? Dear friend, it will only come with kind, patient endurance. Be willing to do the work. That sort of change cannot and should not be rushed. It can only be lived into day by day.

Kindness.

There’s being kind to your kid's school teacher, or the person waiting at the same bus stop as you. And it's great. But then there’s a subversive kindness that forgives and helps and costs.

It sees through angry outbursts and emotional manipulations. It confronts with generosity and sensitivity. It sits with ambiguity and mess. It notices motivation and intention. It doesn’t need clean houses and hairs in place. It disarms, embraces and transforms more than shouting and finger pointing ever could.

“Psychologically and spiritually, there is no such thing as a triumph by force. Domination is domination, not transformation. How you get there determines where you will finally arrive. The dominated one eventually becomes another dominator, or a sad victim, or both; all of whom are liabilities to society and to themselves. You would think we would see that clear pattern in history. I certainly saw it in my fourteen years as a jail chaplain. As even Napoleon is supposed to have said, “Only people of the Spirit actually change things, the rest of us just rearrange them;” God alone is patient enough to wait for real change, and powerful enough to know it will happen. The rest of us are content to “rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic,” which is what violence is always doing.

Untransformed people seem to think that problems can be solved by external force, which is to change things from the top down or from the outside in. What the Word of God moves us toward is several kinds of spiritual power. That’s where things are not just externally changed but really transformed, and not transformed from the top down but from the bottom up, not from the outside in, but rather from the inside out. Or as Jesus puts it, “Clean the inside of the cup and dish, and the outside will take care of itself” (Matthew 23: 26).” Richard Rohr, “Hidden Things: Scripture as Spirituality.” Pg 88.

“Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all.”

It's enough to birth change in your life and the world around you.

Over to you. Leave us your comments below.

Go to Part 3 – Be Jealous »

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