Patience Reprised

Friends,

Happy Wednesday!

This is our last week studying the virtue of patience, and quite honestly, I am feeling glad about that. In my faith journey this month I have come to realize just how much I have to grow in patience and it is sometimes frustrating to admit. :)

Last week, I celebrated my 7th month here at Bon Air as the Director of Christian Education. In reality, that is not much time... barely more than half a year. I have learned and loved and listened in this community. I have spent the last seven months praying for our children, for our church, for God's work. Seven months of practicing the call I feel God has placed on me. Seven months of being in ministry and relationship with each of you. In many, many, many ways I have seen God work all around me... and in other ways I have struggled to be patient. My mind and heart are constantly filled with new ways for us to grow as a community and as a ministry. Every where I look I see opportunities for our kids to grow in their faith, in their service to others, in their love of Christ.

However, if I have learned anything in seven months, it is that patience is a spiritual discipline for a reason. By nature, I am a "doer" and I want things to happen. BUT, things don't work in my time, they work in God's time. This has been a hard lesson for me this month. In my spiritual life, in my professional life, in my personal life-- I have been impatient for God's direction and movement. 

Can any of you relate? Are there places in your life where you are impatient for God to move? Maybe you are a "doer" like me and you want to force God's timing along. Perhaps you just are tired of waiting and waiting and waiting.

Here's the good news I have for you today. Even in our impatience, God is faithful. When I look around me a second time, I see all of the very, very many blessings and fulfilled promises God has given me (and us!) in the last seven months. Like those Israelites from week 1, it is easy to be impatient as we wait on God; but we also must remember that even in (what seems like) a wilderness, our God is forever present.

Blessings,
Amanda