God's patience

I was reminded of a comment that I mentioned to a friend back during the easter season of 2004. I waited with a friend while she had her car looked at and had to have a new light put in her headlight. It seemed like forever being in a parking lot with lots of car repair activity going on. Then I reminded her that Jesus was very patient when He hung on the cross on Good Friday.

My sufferings as a result of being different are much minor in comparison to the love from Calvary. Yesterday at the mall, I was mocked for looking a little different from others in the way I appear and walk. I am more patient with the mockers than when I was a teen growing up. It is the experience that comes from age. Just as when Jesus ministered to the folks back then, He developed a thick skin. Not an easy thing to do, but it is essential to us growing up as handicapped men and women in society.

Jeremiah the prophet uses the analogy of humans as being clay pots that are being molded and shaped by life's pressures. It is not easy being spun by God as He molds me into the person that He wants me to be. I am not always cooperative in that process. It takes time.

Just as in dying to ourselves and our own ultimate goals, there is no immediate result. Yet through this process, Christ will arise. In the gospel accounts, Jesus states that one must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me! If one recognizes that the cross is a symbol of death, the years in this life may seem like hell to those imprisoned in wheelchairs or crutches, but by following God's will, we will become more like Christ in the end.
May these words bless the reader in life.