Divine Patience

Someone told me recently that I had ‘divine patience’. I pondered the difference between divine patience and patience in general. I don’t see myself as a particularly patient person (I’m sure my husband would agree!) but maybe, just maybe, with Solomon’s death, I have been given a glimmer of what divine patience looks like. Perhaps it could be defined like this:

‘trusting in a hope of what is to come, despite life’s current circumstances’.

Two weeks ago, Solomon was due to be born. When he left my womb back in August, I thought that I would find these dates really hard. I didn’t. The thing is, I find it difficult to be sad about Solomon’s death, because I don’t see him as dead, but as alive in heaven. I find it sad that I don’t get to see him growing up now, but I actually believe that God will show me his life when I get to heaven and at some point, there, what I lost here will be fully restored there. So maybe what it is really about is divine patience. One day, we will meet and I will play a part in his life and we will share moments in eternity. What I have lost is only temporary, and it just takes patience until it gets restored again. And how strange we will find it then – that it was so hard to wait, when then, life on earth will seem such a quick brushstroke in the masterpiece of eternity.

‘So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’ - 2 Corinthians 4:18