Patience and Understanding

Patience and understanding are two things which cause most people to groan inside when mentioned. Not many want to go to the effort of having patience with other people and trying to understand their situation takes too much brain strain; so what is our solution? We get agitated and sometimes even lash out, (why else would cars have horns?) We look to vent our frustration and make ourselves feel better, often causing the irritating person to feel worse about their private problem that is causing them to bother us. Most people don’t go out of their way to be a problem, some do, but not most. We all have moments where we drive people crazy. Patience and understanding are things we want other people to have with us but are not things we want to have with others. Like I said, it’s too much work. But when Jesus said, “Treat others as you would have others treat you,” He meant it. Jesus had the ultimate patience, ‘of course He did,’ you say, ‘He is God’s son.’ True but He was made into full man and experienced the same temptations we do; don’t you think that Jesus felt annoyed at times? Any of the rest of us would have eventually just told the pharisees after the second, or even the first encounter with them what they could do with their opinions. Jesus didn’t because He did not yield to the spirit of irritation. Yes we need to vent, but let us try to instead vent to God and tell Him how we feel and ask Him what we should do about it. Don’t feel too bad about being annoyed, but try to see the situation from the other person’s point of view and then renew an old saying, ‘what would Jesus do?’