Last night I was in a small group and we talked about love being patient and love being kind. Patience is tough when we’re so busy, and when we’re busy it’s easy to be irritable and not loving. However, becoming aware of someone else’s story often takes an incredible level of patience and requires one to act with kindness.
In the spirit of The Proverb Curb, being all about slowing down and considering the finer points of life and how to live with better wisdom, I thought these three points where right on.
- To practice love I need to be more patient. That means slowing down, and requires me look around, to see with my eyes what’s going on around me. (It’s not about me.)
- To practice love I need to be more kind. This is an actionable derivative of being patient and actually becoming aware of my surroundings. Being aware of what’s going on around me, by implementing patience, I can then listen to the circumstance (those literally discernible or those that take a little more heart or spiritual intuition to figure out) of those around me.
- Follow through= kindness requires action- if there’s an opportunity to be kind- take it immediately. This was a great lesson to hear last night.
Challenge: how can you improve your patience and enhance your kindness?
One of my personal goals is to read through the Old Testament. I am reading with a particular motivation in mind: to see the larger story at work in time and space, and to learn even more about the character of the God of Judaism and Christianity. After all, what better illustrates one’s character than a look at their history?
This week I stumbled upon a chapter in the book of Deuteronomy (chapter 4) that really impacted me. It’s one of those “stop, rewind, play” kind of moments where Moses puts history into perspective, and reminds the Israelites where they’ve been, where they’re going, and how God has been a force in sustaining them through it all. Particularly relevant to the Proverb Curb mission is Moses’ attention to practical wisdom and teaching, wherein he reminds the people why the law and statutes exist, and how profitable the outcome when living them out.
