Patience / 23.10.2005
Patience is not getting defeated in front of difficulties, it is not submission. The patient person doesn’t say: “I can’t do anything because things happen this way and this way they will stay”. Each one of us gets sad if he was shocked from things, but the patient person does not stay in his sadness forever because he is steady in God. The patient person is wounded like you but he hopes that God will heal his wounds and give him attentiveness and condolences. He might wait a lot but the condolence will eventually come to him.
He doesn’t wait the change to happen with time, because time doesn’t heal everything. A believer knows the importance of the divine grace and that it initiates in our salvation. He endures in order to keep this grace and not lose it through amusement. He believes that God is his father and that he doesn’t leave him a lot of time with pain or bore.
In daily life, you bump into a lot of walls but you hang on in front of them because faith can move mountains and walls so that no wall stays in front of you. If you stick to God you would let them move. Didn’t the Lord say: “He who endures to the end will be saved”? Why did he say “to the end”? Because true faith conserves you to the end. As much as you can empty yourself from disbelief and from sins, the doors of heaven will open in front of you and the Lord will shower you with his grace.
If you follow God in every word from him, then he will follow you. Stay in the spiritual attentiveness and do not sleep to death. Stay in your spiritual activity through keeping the bible and prayer. Do not nag, complain, and curse so that God’s name will stay dwelling in you. Stay calm and remember death because it might surprise you. Get over the harmful pleasures that could harm you if you chose them. You might be sad for a second if you didn’t choose it, but you will be happy after a moment since the Holy Spirit would have come upon you. The communication between you and God makes you watchful on yourself, observing your mind and heart with the power of the divine word and prayer which is the power that makes you a confronter to each distress.
This is why the apostle said: “When you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently this is commendable before God” (1 Peter 2: 20). You will then understand that, after Christ makes himself in you, patience will come from the inside. This spiritual building that you have done inside you makes you the owner of yourself in everything and firm in front of anything; and what you ask from all saints is “the Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1: 9).
Patience does not freeze nor stonify you. On the contrary, it makes you wonderfully energetic in this world; it makes you change people and things that surround you. Being patient, you are remarkably mobile, enduring prisons, torture and the persecution of some people to you because your soul doesn’t know desperation since you constantly have hope.
A lot of what surrounds us is full of evil. You might not change your entire environment, but you can change yourself and some people around you. You can teach a lot of people patience, so do not be afraid if a lot of things don’t change in your life, family, environment and country. Your fight and that of the people that are with you is the only guarantee for the change. Naggers and complainers don’t change anything. Those who curse you are abusing themselves only.
Stay on your morals and in the humble service and in silence in front of gossipers and green-eyed people because this way you might save them. Know that you are situated on the rock which is Christ and that what awaits you is a kingdom prepared only for those who crucified themselves with the desires. You are promised with the light of Christ today and tomorrow.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “الصبر” – 23.10.2005
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