When we have the Lord to look forward to we can already experience him in the waiting. Henri Nouwen
I am amazed sometimes how ideas collide from different places. This last week I've been talking and listening and have come to conclusion the younger you are the more the challenge to learn patience in a relationship with God. Sometimes its worrying about what we are going to do with or for God and yet more we want to get on with it. We are impatient with ourselves because we seem not to be getting any better. The run up to Christmas, called Advent is a season of patience for Israel needed a lot of patience for her Messiah and for us awaiting the second coming and also in the frenetic tensions of the season. Today being Black Friday the beginning of the shopping season! My reading today from Henri Nouwen was on patience.
If we do not wait patiently in expectation for God's coming in glory, we start wandering around, going from one little sensation to another. Our lives get stuffed with newspaper items, television stories, and gossip. Then our minds lose the discipline of discerning between what leads us closer to God and what doesn't, and our hearts gradually lose their spiritual sensitivity.
Without waiting for the second coming of Christ, we will stagnate quickly and become tempted to indulge in whatever gives us a moment of pleasure.Let us live decently, as in the light of day; with no orgies or drunkenness, no promiscuity or licentiousness, and no wrangling or jealousy. Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how your disordered natural inclinations may be fulfilled. Romans 13:13-14
