September 3
September 3
Your life now and in the world to come is built on the infinite patience of the Lord.
I have always loved my children dearly, but I have not always been a patient father. When my children were young, I wanted to protect, guide, instruct, and nurture them. I wanted them to know about God’s grace, and I wanted to incarnate that grace in their lives. But I often fell short. I remember being so irritated when the simple act of getting in the car was an act of sibling war-making. We would barely be out of the house before the bickering would begin about who was going to sit where in the car. Then they would pull and yank on one another in an attempt to get the best seat. Before long one of my children would be crying and asking me to do something about the situation. It made me mad that we couldn’t get in the car peacefully. I tried assigning seats, but then I would have to listen to my children complain as we drove down the road about how unfair it was that all of them somehow always got the worst seat.
As I think about my struggle to be a patient father, I reflect on the amazing patience of my heavenly Father. I had a hard time dealing with silly little moments of sibling quarreling. But God was patient in the face of the ongoing rebellion and idolatry of his people. I don’t mean that he turned his back and acted as though it weren’t happening. And he never lowered his holy standards to indulge his children. To ignore the wandering away of his children would have meant that God lacked love for them. But God, without compromising his holy requirements, responded to his wayward children with amazing patience. His patience and his holiness are never in disharmony.
One of the ways we encounter God’s patience is in his tender pleas for his children to turn again toward him in worship, submission, and obedience. His judgment waits so that his mercy may do its work. Here is the tender, patient heart of the Lord:
You, son of man, say to the house of Israel, Thus have you said: “Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How then can we live?” Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezek. 33:10–11)
Because he is perfectly holy all of the time and in every way, God has a holy hatred for sin. So he pleads with his people to turn from sin’s road to death and live.
Today, in redeeming love, your patient Lord says once again to you, “Turn back from your sin. Why would you choose death over life? Come to me in confession and repentance and live.” Your patient Redeemer, in love, pleads for you to turn. Today, will you hear his plea and turn?