Devotion for February 2, 2016

Tuesday: Love is patient… it is not easily angered (1 Corinthians 13:4, 5).

            Love is the defining virtue of the church, and one of love’s characteristics is its patience. Paul doesn’t use the ordinary word for patience in verse one, but it’s an interesting word nonetheless. It is a compound word which could suggest two meanings. It could mean, “Love is long-tempered,” or a little more colloquially, “Love has a long fuse.” It takes a lot for love to lose its patience and blow up. That shades over into the second possibility, “Love suffers greatly.” The old translations of the Bible used to use the term “long-suffering” and I think that’s a great phrase. Love will put up with a lot and it will do it for a long time.

            Now, love is not infinitely patient. Even God’s patience runs out. (Witness the long history of Israel, during which He finally exiled His people.) But love takes a long time getting there. Too often, we give up on each other too soon. It took centuries for God’s anger to boil over on Israel. Surely, the church should be the place of the second, third, and even fourth chance. Again, that doesn’t mean tolerating everything forever. It does mean giving one another space to grow up, grace to go on, time to understand.