Every Family in God's Service

To walk in love with saints above will be a wondrous glory.

To walk below with saints we know, well, that’s another story.

Our God is eternal. He always was and always will be. God does not experience time the same ways we do. He has a much different perspective on calendars and clocks. What seems like ages to us is just a blink to God.

He is patient.

I am not.

If my computer doesn’t load ESPN’s home page in 1.6 seconds, I get irritated. I get frustrated in the lines at WalMart. My garage door goes up too slowly.

But God is patient. God is willing to let entire centuries go by. He allows whole millennia to pass as he carefully works out his eternal purposes. And during the ups and downs of God’s slow --- slow only to us --- process of redeeming the world, it’s tempting to become impatient with one another. It’s easy, I’m afraid, to grumble and complain and fuss and bicker and argue. God patiently works with me. He waits on me. But I sometimes refuse to be patient with my own brothers and sisters.

We are in a slow but steady process of being transformed into the image of Christ. It’s an on-going, continual action upon us. This changing is being done to us over the course of time. God’s time. God is patiently working to transform us into the image-of-God people we were created to be. So we can afford to be patient with one another. We know we’re not done.

How can I ever get mad at you? It’s not like God’s finished with you yet. How can we fuss at each other or grow frustrated with anybody in the Body? God is still changing us. We are always becoming who we are meant to be. Certainly none of us has arrived.

So let’s cut each other some slack. Let’s give each other a break.

Peace,

Allan