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Sunday, February 10, 2002
As
we approach Valentine's Day, it is a good idea to understand this thing
called  Love a little better. To understand Love we must understand
the attributes of Love. What makes Love, Love? John, the
Disciple who symbolized Love, explained, "Perfect Love casts out
fear." In order to know what Perfect Love is, we must
understand the attributes of It. We can find in scripture that
Love is Patient and Kind among other things. This week let's
look at patience and kindness.
Patience is defined in the Dictionary as follows: Synonyms: patience,
long-suffering, resignation, forbearance - These nouns denote the
capacity to endure hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience without
complaint. Patience emphasizes calmness, self-control, and the
willingness or ability to tolerate delay.
Patience emphasizes calmness and self-control. Loving
relationships, friendships and even family relationships require our
patience. Without patience we can easily end up with discord and
distancing ourselves from those we love, our friends and even our
families. This attribute of Love is very necessary in order to
move into or maintain harmony in our relationships. Patience is
also absolutely necessary in our prayer life and can make the difference
between effective prayer and not having beneficial results from our
prayers.
I have so many people contact me regarding relationship difficulties,
and most often they are at the "end of their rope"
emotionally. They want to change the person they are involved with
and they want that person to change right now. And many of them
expect God to change them. But everyone that we have in our
experience is, of course, teaching us something, supporting us in
reaching our highest and greatest Good. If they weren't, they
wouldn't be in our experience. If in fact, they teach us patience,
then they will teach us something very valuable indeed. Love
cannot thrive without patience. It is loving patience that
creates harmony in the face of discord, health in the face of sickness
and loving relationships in our experience. Our impatience is
always with ourselves and impatience denies that Love is always present
in our experience.
The Dictionary defines Kind as: Synonyms:
kind, kindly, kindhearted, benign, benevolent - These adjectives mean
having or showing a tender, considerate, and helping nature.
Kindness comes from the Divine Love within us. Oftentimes
we are kind when there is truly no explainable reason for it.
Kindness is most often so spontaneous that we are unaware of our acts of
kindness until after the fact. Without
Patience and Kindness, Love cannot flourish.
No one can be patient or kind for another anymore than someone can think
for another person. The attributes of patience and kindness are
cultivated within our own consciousness.
People may judge us as patient and kind but no one knows for certain if
we are or if we are not. Too many of our actions that
display kindness or patience can be motivated by obligation or adherence
to socially acceptable behavior. No one knows for another what
motivates them to do anything but the person acting. True
patience and kindness is an act of selflessness. Each and everyone
of us are given many opportunities in life to practice both patience and
kindness. The more often we accept these opportunities and act
with kindness and patience the more these attributes of Love become part
of our natural behavior.
To the degree that we are willing to be patient
and kind, we embody a fuller and more delightful sense of Love.
Love cannot be fully expressed through a consciousness that lacks
patience and kindness for these attributes are the "strength of
love." If we desire more Love in our experience, then we must
cultivate and foster patience and kindness for Love cannot exist without
them.
And
So It Is!
Letting Love use me
in Its own Good Way,
Henry Lee
Bates
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