I think I need to live a little while in Colossians 3. It is often where I find my peace in what God has done for me and where I re-orient my walk with Him.
The other day I drove to someone’s house for the first time. It was not far, and I knew the general area, but I plugged it into my maps on my phone anyway. We are in “nice weather season in Idaho” now, which means we are also in “construction season.” I kept hitting road closures, probably about five during the drive over. As I took the detours my phone kept calling out to me “re-calculating, re-calculating.”
Sometimes in life that is exactly what we must do, re-calculate. We take little detours into the world or we allow our emotions to lead for a while and then we must re-calculate our walk with God. When that happens, I am back with Paul in Colossians 3.
“Bear with each other ….” [3:13a]
After we were reminded about our spiritual coat of many colors in verse 12 (compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience), Paul goes on to remind us about forbearing with other. To forbear with each other in the Greek is simply “to put up with.”
In the English to forebear means to politely or patiently restrain an impulse to do something. This virus-and-fear pandemic has many of us on edge. When that happens, we tend to react impulsively. We get angry and fire off insults or act irresponsibility (just to show we can). As Christians, however, we are to forbear. We are to react prayfully, with the spiritual coat of compassion, kindness, humility, and patience no matter what the provocation.
Holy Spirit, help us to don our spiritual coat of many colors and forbear in the midst of this difficult time. Amen.
