“May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy,..”

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Most of us grow impatient if we have to wait too long. You have probably been in line for groceries and seen how much abuse the check stand servers have to endure at the hands of impatient shoppers, through no fault of their own. Having to wait can bring out the worst in us. Waiting can be hard, long, tiring and aggravating. 

The photo posted above is of the Sawyer Glaciers, located at the end of the Tracy Arm Fjord in Alaska. These massive rivers of ice and snow crawl along slowly, their movement virutually imperceptible. Slow as they may be, however, they are irresitable. Everything before them is wept away and the effects of their progress are permanent, their purpose inevitably fulfilled.

For the Christian, waiting is the matrix in which faith grows. Waiting keeps us grounded in the here and now and focused on the opportunities for living that each day brings us. In waiting we learn that walking, not running, is the proper pace of living.  At times, when our needs and longings seem too much for us, we can grow impatient with what appears to be God’s slowness to act. At those times it may be helpful to remember that creation rides on God’s glacial purposes. The power and inevitability with which they move are staggering, beyond us. 

Therefore, on this new day of grace, take up Paul’s prayer on behalf of the Colossian Christians as your own. Pray that God’s power and might may translate into your life as endurance and patience, keeping you in the faith and confident that His purposes in Christ Jesus are carrying you along as surely as those rivers of ice, imperceptibly yet inevitably, flow into the sea.

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“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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