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by L B Cowman
Run With Patience
"Let us run with patience" (Heb. 12:1).
O run with patience is a very difficult thing. Running is apt to suggest the
absence of patience, the eagerness to reach the goal. We commonly associate
patience with lying down. We think of it as the angel that guards the couch of
the invalid. Yet, I do not think the invalid's patience the hardest to achieve.
There is a patience which I believe to be harder--the patience that can run. To
lie down in the time of grief, to be quiet under the stroke of adverse fortune,
implies a great strength; but I know of something that implies a strength
greater still: It is the power to work under a stroke; to have a great weight at
your heart and still to run; to have a deep anguish in your spirit and still
perform the daily task. It is a Christ-like thing!
Many of us would nurse our grief without crying if we were allowed to nurse it.
The hard thing is that most of us are called to exercise our patience, not in
bed, but in the street. We are called to bury our sorrows, not in lethargic
quiescence, but in active service--in the exchange, in the workshop, in the hour
of social intercourse, in the contribution to another's joy. There is no burial
of sorrow so difficult as that; it is the "running with patience."
This was Thy patience, O Son of man! It was at once a waiting and a running--a
waiting for the goal, and a doing of the lesser work meantime. I see Thee at
Cana turning the water into wine lest the marriage feast should be clouded. I
see Thee in the desert feeding a multitude with bread just to relieve a
temporary want. All, all the time, Thou wert bearing a mighty grief, unshared,
unspoken. Men ask for a rainbow in the cloud; but I would ask more from Thee. I
would be, in my cloud, myself a rainbow -- a minister to others' joy. My
patience will be perfect when it can work in the vineyard. --George Matheson
"When all our hopes are gone,
'Tis well our hands must keep toiling on
For others' sake:
For strength to bear is found in duty done;
And he is best indeed who learns to make
The joy of others cure his own heartache."
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