Patience...or lack thereof.

Came across this little gem tonight in my reading.

⁹The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9

Patience....It is something I severely lack at times. We live in such a fast paced society. If my Internet browser takes longer than 3 seconds to load I am giving my index finger a major workout by clicking that left mouse button repeatedly. Remember the days of AOL?? The crazy sounds the computer would make as your dial up (remember that?!?) modem got fired up....seems so slow now to us. At the time however, being able to connect to the world in 5 minutes was amazing!

I bring up this example to show how incredible relative our understanding of time and speed is. What seems fast today will seem slow tomorrow. This relativity we give to "slowness" leads me to believe that we don't know a hill of beans about keeping time.

You see the people in Peter's day expected Jesus coming back pronto....that was 2000+ years ago! Jesus's return seemed overly slow to them. It can be easy for us to say the same thing with each passing day....what is taking Him so long? Why is this process so slow?

Peter tells us that God is being patient (something that I and many if not all of my human brothers and sisters know very little about). Why? To summarize...He love us fallen sinners! Let's face it...if Christ came back today...how many would He take with Him? Probably not as many as we think. This should cause us to tremble a little bit...are we truly living lives that are bringing glory to the Creator?

Check out the next verse
¹⁰But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.
2 Peter 3:10.

We don't know when Jesus is returning...but we do know that it will come swiftly without much warning...like a thief! May this be an ever present reminder that our lives must be living testaments to how much we lover our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

PS

A side note....www.factcheck.org...check it out. With all of the media coverage of politics today (esp. bashing every known policy of Pres. Obama) I suggest everyone take time to get the facts before believing what the newspeople say. This site is unbiased (trust me...they've thrown the BS flag on Obama as well) and will allow us to become better informed people.

PPS
And finally (longest blog entry yet?!) a quote from John Wesley...I will elaborate more on it next entry. This quote reflects on what I believe is the current struggle conservative and liberal christians find themselves in.

"Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences"

Tragedy

Tragedy....first of all...summer is only a month longer...major tragedy. It has been a fun one but one that has gone by far too fast. Hard to believe the final year of college is going to be starting in a month!

I have continued to read this book called Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White. I don't agree with everything in the book but I do find some of his thoughts dead on. One of these ideas is his opinions on tragedy.

Ever heard someone say "It happened for a reason" after something terrible happened? I'm not sure I buy that anymore. The example he gave was his youth pastor and friend. They were driving along until a downed power line came into contact with them. Both were killed. Both had young kids who would no longer have a father. Several people told the author that they believed God took them so that someone could come to know Him at the funeral or later.

Is this really how God works?? Does he need to take people from Earth to bring others to Him? Couldn't so many more people have been impacted by these men if they were still alive today? I don't think God works this way. His friends were killed because there was a freak accident that they happened to be a part of. Don't get me wrong I believe God knows about it, but I don't think He causes it to happen "for a reason". We live in a fallen world. Sometimes bad things will happen to good people just because bad things happen. Tragedy is not discriminatory.

My own personal faith life has its challenges. How I long to just get "back in line". Why is this so difficult? Probably due to the stress in my life...the lack of effort on my part...my stubborn insistence to do things on my own. Life is hard....following God in life is harder. May I continue to strive to make things better. To Him be the Glory!