Patience with Imperfection

by Jon Walker

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 4:2 (NIV)

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Humorist Dave Barry says, “A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.”

The same could be said of a perfect world or a perfect family; there’s only one way to mess things up: People!

Living with imperfect people requires patience, and you – now I say this as a friend – are one of the imperfect people who requires patience! Unfortunately, I’m an imperfect person too.

Patience means putting up with me when you’d rather lose your temper; it means forgiving me when you’d rather nurture a grudge.

In addition, patience is a muzzle on a mouth full of murmurs that are passed along as prayer requests. Patience puts the long in long-suffering. Patience is love in action because “love is patient” (1 Corinthians 13:4 NIV).

Patience and a critical spirit are mutually exclusive. Even when your complaints are justified, patience pushes and pulls you toward forgiving and forgetting: “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense” (Proverbs 19:11 NIV).

Being patient may try our patience, but we become stronger when we learn to love imperfect people. Patience frees us to develop godly diversity in our relationships, where we no longer require everyone to act and look and think the same way we do.

© 2008 Purpose Driven Life. All rights reserved.

Pilots run out of fuel, pray, land near Jesus sign

Men able to glide powerless microlight to a safe landing on grassy strip

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - It seemed like an almost literal answer to their prayers. When two New Zealand pilots ran out of fuel in a microlight airplane they offered prayers and were able to make an emergency landing in a field — coming to rest right next to a sign reading, "Jesus is Lord."

Grant Stubbs and Owen Wilson, both from the town of Blenheim on the country's South Island, were flying up the sloping valley of Pelorus Sound when the engine spluttered, coughed and died.
"My friend and I are both Christians so our immediate reaction in a life-threatening situation was to ask for God's help," Stubbs told The Associated Press on Wednesday
He said he prayed during the ill-fated flight Sunday that the tiny craft would get over the top of a ridge and that they would find a landing site that was not too steep — or in the nearby sea.
Wilson said that the pair would have been in deep trouble if the fuel had run out five minutes earlier.

"If it had to run out, that was the place to be," he said. "There was an instantaneous answer to prayer as we crossed the ridge and there was an airfield — I didn't know it existed till then."
After Wilson glided the powerless craft to a landing on the grassy strip, the pair noticed they were beside a 20-foot-tall sign that read, "Jesus is Lord — The Bible."
"When we saw that, we started laughing," Stubbs said.

Nearby residents provided them with gas to fly the home-built plane back to base.

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