Patience

Well, praise God, incompetent hack though S/He may be.

The "HOPE" I mentioned in the update to my last post seems to be proving well-founded. My cousin John stood up yesterday, for the first time in a month. On both legs. He's not going to have full use of his right leg - not without a lot of PT and further surgery - but it's looking like he's almost certain not to lose it entirely. And his white blood cell count is almost down to normal, so I think maybe the Beast is finally giving up. So praise God!

In a comment on my last post, I said,

I seem to be getting one of those "tiny message storms" that I tend to interpret as a message from God. Does that ever happen to you? When, like, in the course of a day, two or three friends, my morning Bible study guide, and one or two other things I read all seem to say the same thing, coincidentally? This time, it's, "Remember that you are dust. Patience. Wait on God. God's time is not your time."

So, OK, I hear You. I'm trying. But the fact that I haven't seen an update on my cousin makes me terribly afraid that he lost his leg yesterday. And expressing that kind of anger toward You is something that the Psalmists did all the time, so I don't feel that guilty.

So I wait, and try to be patient. But I don't wait serenely. I wait with some anger, because faithful assurances that "it's all going to work out just fine in the End, when the Kingdom comes" sometimes ring pretty hollow.

Patience is hard. And it frequently is not rewarded. But, I'm thinking it's a lesson I need to learn this Lent.