Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 559 of our trek, and we are hiking a series of trails called The Tools in Gramps’ Backpack.
Each Monday for a total of 20 weeks we are exploring a different tool that is needed to motivate and equip parents and grandparents to train their children and grandchildren to be successful on their trek of life. If you don’t have children or grandchildren of your own, use these tools to train others that you do influence. Today the 10th tool from Gramps’ Backpack is Patience.
We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. Life is hectic, and situations can really try our patience. In our instant everything world that we now live in, we lose patience so easily. If our fast food meal takes us five minutes to receive, if a website takes more than a few seconds to load, if we get behind someone driving that happens to be driving just the speed limit, we go crazy. This is why it is so important that we include the tool of patience in our backpack as one of our character traits. We first need to learn it ourselves, which is very difficult, and then through patience, we need to teach it to others. So the tool that we will explore today is…
Patience is a tool that every thoughtful parent and grandparent needs themselves and to then skillfully teach it to others. The lack of patience is really a sign of foolishness and selfishness. The reason we become impatient is that we feel that our time and priorities are more important than others.
Patience is the embodiment of love. Love is an exercise in patience. One of the attributes of love is being patient. 1 Corinthians 13:4 reads, “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud.”
From time to time, even our most considerate friends and family members may do things that worry us, confuse us, or anger us. Why is this? Because they are human and not perfect, just like we are. It is exactly because they are human that we must be patient with their shortcomings, just as they need to be with ours. Ephesians 4:2 tells us, “Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.”
St. Augustine said that Patience is the companion of wisdom. It is also listed as part of the fruit of the spirit contained in Galatians 5:22-23, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these...
