Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God…. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
I thought his sermon yesterday on patience was brilliant and maybe just what I needed at this time. He compared patience to a crankcase filled with oil. “Patience is like good motor oil. It doesn’t remove all the contaminants. It just puts them into suspension so they don’t get into your works and seize them up. Patient people have, so to speak, a large crankcase. They can put a lot of irritants into suspension.”
That patience is not just naïve and stoic, it allows for righteous anger and knows deeply that real justice takes time, sometimes a real long time. Plantinga suggested we look to the patience of an Atticus Finch from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird who was able to bring together righteous anger at injustice controlled by a patience which allowed him to do his work.