The Rewards of Patience

Patience is often a hard lesson for us to learn. Most don't have the energy or the time for patience! Waiting goes against the grain of our human nature. We see life as painfully fast, time is constantly running out, and we've got to get our show on the road, right?

This is clearly the way most of us act, even if we don't verbally express it that way. Perhaps that's one reason why the Bible includes so many examples of godly patience and its reward. Waiting is just never easy for us. We fuss and fume and work ourselves up into a dither. We don't have time for patience.! Yet, in Scripture we see the Father, over and over again, making promises to His earthly children, only to have them wait years ... sometimes decades ... for the fulfillment to those promises. We need to remember that God stands outside of time. He isn't tied to a big heavenly clock the way we are. But if we have the patience, the results will always a blessing.

Consider Abraham. When he was 75 years old he was given God's promise of a son; ten years later, he was still waiting for the fulfillment. Fifteen years passed, then twenty years and still no son. Finally, when Abraham was 100 years old ... a full quarter of a century after God made the promise to Abraham ... the baby Isaac was born. Surely during those 25 years Abraham was troubled by episodes and periods of doubt, yet he nevertheless continued to trust God as he watched for the fulfillment of His promise.

Scripture is filled with other examples. When he was a young man, Jacob met and began working for the woman of his dreams. But because of fraud, he ended up having to work twice as long as he needed to before he could make her his bride. Joseph at the young age of only 17, had a God-given vision but ended up languishing thirteen years in slavery and prison before receiving the object of that vision. David was anointed King of Israel as a teenager but spent the next fourteen years running for his very life, hiding in dark, musty, spider infested caves, before he actually took the throne.

Shortcuts never seem to lead where God wants us to be. However, the long road is filled with faithful servants. Are you waiting on the Lord for something you need or desire? Be encouraged, then, you're in good company! Don't give up your wait. God will make it worthwhile. He always makes good on His promises. Patience is something we have to work for and God will give us the opportunities and the time to build it into our character.

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Whew! I am tired and hot!! Just finished my housework. I got all the furniture vacuumed and moved it out of the way so I could vacuum under it. Got the entire house vacuumed. Mopped and waxed all the floors, dusted everything I didn't get dusted yesterday and did a tub of laundry. I am going to die in this heat! But I've pretty well got everything done now. A few things to finalize yet but I had to take a break before I fainted from being so over heated and I thought I'd just sit here and type my blog while I rested and give myself the chance to cool down a little. But I will say my house looks good. And it smells so good too. That's one of my favorite parts of life: the smell of cleanliness. When you mix all the different smells of the cleaning agents together, they just smell wonderful. So things will definitely sparkle and smell good for my company tomorrow

I went with Michael yesterday when he went to his medical appointment. We got up at 7:00 and made it over to the clinic 15 mins before his appointment. He went right in and we were out of the doctor's office before it was even time for his appointment. Wish my doctor appointments would go that way. I always have to end up waiting and waiting. Dr. Johnson was the worst in that regard. It was nothing to wait for two hours to get in to see him. But I won't have to wait for him any longer since I'm not going back to him. We swung by WalMart after we left the clinic and I bought two more bandannas and two do-rags. If you don't know, do-rags are those cloth beanies the guys are wearing that just cover the head from the ears up and they tie at the nape of the neck. They are really comfortable to wear and they cover the bald head just fine. I won't wear them to church but I'll wear them around the house. I'll just keep to the bandannas for church and other activities. I had a friend from church call this morning and she told me that if I end up buying a wig, she wants to buy it for me. I thought that was really nice of her and I will let her do that because it's something she said she really wanted to do. Sometimes we have to let people do things for us. God calls people to step up and do things and we never know when we might be getting in God's way if we aren't sensitive to His leadings in the lives of others toward us. In the meantime she's got a few cute little hats that she's going to bring to church Sunday and I can switch and wear one of them if I want. I tell you, I have had more love and concern poured out on me over this balding episode! Maybe I should go bald more often! I say that in jest. I'm hoping I'll never have to go through this again. I happened to think yesterday what if this becomes a regular occurrence? What if this happens again? That would really be a bummer. I am definitely hoping this is a once-in-a-lifetime trial. The thing is, I'm not really sure what made all my hair fall out in the first place so I have no idea if it will happen again in the future. I have a doctor appointment next week and I'll get his opinion on it then. This all started out as an itchy head. Then it went to a number of sores on my head. Then it spread over my entire head and hardened into a "crust," and as that crust came off, my hair came off with it. The first doctor thought it was an allergic reaction to a hair product that got infected. You can bet I will use every product I have to make sure I don't have another reaction sometime after my hair grows out. That would be something, get my hair all grown out and go back to my hair care products and have the allergic reaction all over again! No way! I'll use these products ASAP to make sure they are safe for my head. It will take me months to grown my hair back and I don't intend for it to ever fall out again!

M will have to have surgery on his foot again in October to remove all the hardware they left in the last time they did surgery. His metal plate has cracked and two of the screws have backed out of their holes about an eighth of an inch and the doctor thinks that's what's causing his pain.

The coolant fan on my car stopped working on the way home from going across the river and my car over heated. We were barely able to limp it home. We found out that if you ignore the computer's warning (we were only one block from home), a very audible alarm starts beeping in the car. M had to disconnect the battery to get it to stop beeping. When the car cooled down he was able to reconnect the battery without it beeping. So now there's another car worry. It will get me around town but no long drives anywhere. We'll have to stick with our bus for things like that. Bummer. But my car has 200,000 miles on it so I have to kind of expect things to be wearing out on it!

We have really been enjoying the Olympics. They are so much fun to watch. We watched proudly as the Americans won Gold and Silver in the Women's Gymnastic competition last night. And I have been strangely very proud of the Chinese for all their talent too. They've had good strong teams in diving and gymnastics. (But there's no way they're going to convince me those girls were 16 years old!!!) And we were especially surprised at how much we enjoyed the synchronized diving. This is the first we knew of synchronized diving. I don't remember ever seeing it before but it was really fun to watch. The Chinese divers were incredible at it!

Yesterday the smoke and wind were awful again. We're a little smoky today but yesterday was just horrible. One of these days the fires will all be out and we won't have smoke anymore. (I have to keep telling myself that or I get depressed.) We topped out at 113.9 degrees yesterday too! So we were miserable up until almost 10:00 PM. We've had temps this high before and I discovered I still hate them as much as I always have.

You know, lately I've done some thinking. Well actually I've been doing a lot of thinking but mostly I've been thinking that we live fascinating lives if we are living in the center of God's will. The very center of God's will is where all the power's at. And all the attacks that Satan hurls at us through the sins of others are not only powerless to harm us but are supernaturally transformed into blessings along the way. Isn't it glorious to know that no matter how unjust something may be, even when it seems to have come from Satan himself, by the time it reaches us, it is God's will for us and will ultimately work to our own good? "Great are the works of the LORD ... glorious and majestic are His deeds, and His righteousness endures forever" (Ps 111:2-3).

But I think probably the single most difficult truth to claim, is that God intends our trials to be good; He doesn't take the bad and change it to good. He intends the bad for good (Gen 50:20). Can you grasp that truth? It seems like such a difficult truth for us to understand and believe. But we will reap tremendous rewards for our struggles and trials and difficulties. God is in our lives and He is actively involved in every facet of our daily living. God is never surprised by the trials that beset us; He intends them for good. He's never caught off guard when we call upon the name of Jesus and difficulties encircle us; He intends them for good. We have no need to fear. God will never allow us to go where He isn't willing to go Himself. So when He intends evil for good, He's right there with us every step of the way. What a gracious God we have. How can I explain this? It's like my hair in a way, I suppose. God intended my hair loss as something good for me. And I have seen so much good come out of losing all my hair. I have been strengthened in an area where I have always been incredibly weak. I have learned humility and reaped faith. I have watched people step to the front and say they want to do "this or that" for me. They want to help. So we can see that it's not just me that is learning something through this trial. Everyone who knows me will learn just what the Lord intends for them to learn if they will yield themselves to His process of education. I have always been super sensitive about my hair. It always had to look just right. To do His work on this aspect of my character, God saw fit to take all my hair away, and in the process, I have learned humility. And believe me, I will have learned patience by the time this trial is over. Your hair doesn't fall out and grow back to the way it was in a matter of days or weeks. We're talking several months here. Human hair grows just about a half inch a month so if your hair was three inches long when it fell out, it will be six months before it's back to normal. That's half a year! That's plenty of time to grow patience. Hopefully I will learn this lesson well and won't have to go through it all over again. But we will all be better off if we can grasp the fact that God intends evil for good in our lives sometimes. He intends our struggles and hardships and trials for our own good. Don't make the mistake of thinking that every bad experience is of the devil. Quite often it's the bad God intends for good. Sometimes it take a trial to get our attention. Sometimes it takes a trial to shape us into what God would have us be. Jesus made rock solid promises to us and one such promise was that we would be transformed into the likeness of Christ. Think of the crucifixion. Wasn't that evil God intended for good? And why will we be better off if we can grasp this truth? Because if we can get the idea of evil for good into our heads, we won't be fighting against Him when He intends evil for good.

I'm going to go ahead and publish this post and will proofread and edit it later. So if you've found a lot of mistakes or something doesn't quite make much sense, you now know why. But I need to get horizontal for awhile. (That's just another way of saying that I need a nap.) Got up entirely too early after going to bed so late last night. (Hopefully my computer won't reboot or something where I won't be able to come back and edit. If that happens, you're on your own to figure out what I meant to say if what I said didn't make sense.) See you all in a little while.