I am not the first person to notice that the more we pray for patience, the more God multiples opportunities to practice patience in daily life. I have four kids under five and I seem to have more challenging days than easy ones. I love my kids, so much, but it’s just a lot when they are all screaming for something different, or because one looked at the other for too long, or because one accidentally knocked the other one on her way to the kitchen. And the easy response is to yell louder than them all until they all listen. But, incidentally, that is not the most effective method. Trust me, I try it at least once a week. Yet, despite the lack of success I have, I still do it. ALL THE TIME. Definition of insanity, I know. The reality is that I really struggle to deal with my kids patiently and graciously. It is like I expect them to just instinctively know better. But that is actually completely ridiculous. I will never have to teach my kids how to annoy each other, or disobey, or lie, or hit, or any of the other numerous things they do that are wrong. Those things come naturally to the little sinners that crowd around me on a daily basis (usually looking for food). Sin is ingrained; it is doing right and being good that I must fight to implant in the minds of my children. The absolute worst part of it is that I know I am so much better at being patient with the sinners I am not trying to raise. I try to teach my kids to be patient with others, kind to their friends, and to be gracious with the people around them. And here I am, failing to do all those things with them at home. This really isn’t new, I know from talking to other moms that I am not the only one who struggles in this way. I feel like part of my failing is that I feel like my kids should be inherently different than all the other sinners out there, but that kind of attitude leads me to be one of the biggest sinners they see.
One of the results of my impatience and sin towards my kids is my inability, on bad days, to be gracious. When I am tired and annoyed and busy, I am quick to just punish and be done with it. I don’t give many opportunities for them to do better. The gavel falls and punishment is dolled out and I move on my way feeling more frustrated than I did before, with the added bonus of feeling guilty. While I am well aware that discipline is an important part of my role as a parent, I am also here to live God-love before my children, and God-love is not as short tempered as I can be. It is in my journey through the prophets that I found some clarity. The past two weeks I have dedicated time to the book of Amos and I really appreciate the blunt images and language. I also deeply appreciate the sarcasm that God shares. Anyway, the point of this all is that Amos does a good job in laying out a list of all the times God tried to reform his people without completely destroying them (4:6-11). I am sure the list could be longer if everything had been listed in detail, but the overall message is this: God was extremely patient, only making things uncomfortable in the hopes that that would be enough. But it wasn’t, His people were just as hard headed as they were before. And when you look at the collective history of the people of Israel, their number of infractions is astoundingly large. It is a story that is a series of continual bad choices. I know that there are some really great bright spots, but the general theme is one of failure. Absolute and total failure, on so many levels (not that we can really claim to be any better today). The best part of this story is the most important part; God’s patience. God hates sin so much that it would have been understandable if he brought the gavel down hard after the very first infraction on the part of his people. But He didn’t. He tried to nudge and remind them gently for as long as he could. He gave opportunity after opportunity for them to turn back, to rend their hearts, to repent, to cling to Him. It was God being fully aware of their heart desire for sin and acting accordingly. It was God showing us how to be patient parents; by being mindful of the sinful shortcomings of our children and responding with grace and love and whole lot of mercy. That’s not to say that the hammer never falls, but it does mean that, as a mother, I need to remember that my children all have hearts that want to sin. They are too young to know it or to understand the implications, but they are old enough to understand grace, to see mercy, and to know love. How I respond to my children when they are repeatedly bad speaks more into their lives than what I do when I am angry. I need to lead with my mind, not punish with my hurt heart. I need to look at this loving example God gave us. Even after He brought the gavel down and sentenced his people to another time of servitude and banishment, he left them with hope, he promised them good things in days to come. That is parent love.
It is so easy to look at the prophetic books and see an angry God, but that anger is a righteous anger and his response to the sin of his people was a lot more gracious than they deserved, because the scale used to weigh the imbalance was a right and true and holy one. Yes, what God brought upon his people was sad and scary and hard and painful and difficult to understand from a human perspective. But I am sure the inhabitants of heaven who daily witnessed the glory and goodness and rightness and holiness of God were astounded by His comparative leniency. The picture of God we take from the prophetic books relies heavily on what we believe to be true about God. There is much love and beauty and grace to be seen as long as we remember the scale on which all things are measured. If we take offence, it is because we forget the goodness and righteousness of God and look only through the lens of people who need grace. When we do that, we fail to see the patience God extended to a people he knew were sinful, yet chose anyway. They were His children in a way that even we, as Christians, do not fully understand. God still has special promises for His Israel. On the right scale, Israel should have been completely wiped out, anything else is just grace. Do you see it? God did all of this, punished them in this way, to draw them back, to make them search, to lead them to the moment when the greatest part of his plan would be revealed. The bible is a book about God, and we need to remember the subject before we will understand the message.
faith from the stove 