Patience

In Sunday school today, Marv listed various forms of communication on the white board. He started with party lines and snail mail and continued through cell phone, text messaging and twitter.

Isn't it amazing how technology has advanced in the last few decades? I remember all of these types of communication. Our family didn't have a party line when I was small, but I remember Mom talking about them. I remember when faxes came into existence (using that terrible thermal paper on a roll), when cell phones were actually car phone, bolted to the car, and when computers took up a room and required one to schedule time to use them compared to small, mysterious machines that sit on your lap while you type and watch TV (as I am now).

With this on rush of technological change in the last few decades and the resulting speed of communication, have we become an impatient society? Do we have any ability to invest time and wait for results?

We laugh at Abraham and Sarah as they became impatient with God's promise for a family, but they waited so LONG between God's promise and the results. Would we even come close to the kind of patience and faith they demonstrated?

Could we wait seven years while working for someone before the promised reward was delivered (as Jacob did for his wife?). What about the patience of Simeon, waiting to see the Messiah?

Has the way we live changed our ability to demonstrate faith over a long period of time?

A Family in Transition

This morning I read Genesis 24.  This is the story of Abraham sending his servant to his homeland to find a wife for Isaac.

Abraham does not want Isaac to marry a Canaanite from the land in which they are living and he does not want Isaac to go back to the land from which they came.  No place is really home.  They are a family in transition, truly living out the idea that God has not finished.

They wait in faith for God's promise to be fulfilled.  They know, through their faith, that God has promised them a home in the future, and has instructed them to come to the land to which he led them.  So, Abraham and his family wait.