Grin, and bear it

And like it is for God, the patience that responds to him involves not only waiting and endurance, but forbearance. That is, putting up with the mistakes and sins of other people. Wearing the wounds - carrying on our own shoulders their frailties, as we can.

That's what we promise when we pray 'forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us'. How can we NOT forgive and thus forbear when we have been forgiven so much?

Not that any properly Christian account of forgiveness would let us get away with the delusion that forgiving is not costly and painful. Forgiveness isn't a matter of saying 'what you did to me wasn't wrong after all'; it is saying 'what you did WAS wrong, but I refuse to exact my revenge. I let it go. I absorb its impact, God being my helper, and I don't hold it against you.'

In Ephesians Paul tells Christians to 'be patient, beaing with one another in love'. That is - be like God himself - slow to anger, abounding in love, hasty to forgive.

As a person who pushes lift buttons several times, I know that patience is not a virtue natural to me. I am a caffeine driven modern person who hates time traps. And what's more, I don't find it easy to let those wrongs against me go. I do not tolerate mistakes easily - except my own. My prayer for myself is that I would discover the divine patience - and be transformed by it.