"Free to Be Patient" Romans 8: 18-30

Proverbs 25: 15 --" With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue can break bones."

I find it fascinating that the theme of patience in the biblical text leans toward how we deal with the presence of evil or how we handle it when the people doing bad things seem to be succeeding.  Almost as if patience is a necessary response to jealousy.

thinking about kairos and chronos:  In the New Testament kairos means "the appointed time in the purpose of God", the time when God acts (e.g. Mark 1.15, the kairos is fulfilled). Kairos (used approximately 81 times in the NT) seems to be an indeterminate time, a "moment" or a "season," whereas another Greek term chronos (used 54 times) refers to a specific amount of time, such as a day or an hour (Acts 13.18, 27.9, etc.).

Kairos (καιρός) is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment). The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a time lapse, a moment of indeterminate time in which everything happens. What is happening when referring to kairos depends on who is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature. Kairos also means weather in both ancient and modern Greek. The plural, καιροί (kairoi (Ancient Gk. and Mod. Gk.)) means the times.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos

Hard to be patient; hard to preach patience in a world of instant communication and instant gratification.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser." -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin From Sallie Sampsell Watson’s FB page

Ann Lamott: “I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark; the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” (bird by Bird, xxiii)

Patience/God’s time: It was a beautiful spring day, and a sense of peace stayed with me as I left
the cathedral on Easter Monday morning. I paused for a moment on top of the
steps leading to the avenue, now crowded with people rushing to their jobs.
Sitting in her usual place inside a small archway was the old flower lady.
At her feet, corsages and boutonnieres were parading on top of a spread-open newspaper.

The flower lady was smiling, her wrinkled old face alive with some inner joy. I started down the stairs--then on an impulse, turned and picked out a flower.

As I put it in my lapel, I said, "You look happy."

"Why not?' she answered. "Everything is good."

She was dressed so shabbily and seemed so very old that her reply started me. "You've been sitting here for many years now, haven't you? And always smiling. You wear your troubles well."

"You can't reach my age and not have troubles," she replied. "only it's like Jesus and Good Friday...." She paused for a moment.

"Yes?" I prompted

"Well, when Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, that was the worst day for the whole world. When I get troubles I remember that, and then I think of what happened only three days later-Easter and our Lord rose from the dead. So when things go wrong, I've learned to wait days and somehow everything gets much better."

She smiled good-bye, but her words still follow me whenever I think I have
troubles... "Give God a chance to help...wait three days."

[Original author unknown to me]