On Patience and People

Now that the students are gone and the week winds down there is more time to think and write

People are not static things.... they are alive... they move and change, adapt... their motives their dreams all evolve. Sometimes we think can just "fix" person like with fix a thing. Just hit it or nail it or glue it or whatever and he or she will be like we want them to be or like the should be.

Nope it just doesn't work that way with people
They need to be guided or corrected or challenged or the best of all options they need to be inspired. Inspiring is not easy but it is definitely the way to go. When you inspire someone you win their heart.

Most of all when we deal with each other we need to love others like God loves us, Patiently.
Patience being patient, giving them time to grow, see and understand that's the only way you can really deal with people. We should forgo patience only in the most difficult of circumstances. Otherwise we risk losing not only our purpose but also the person.

Once upon a time in Danbury Connecticut on one of my walks I met an old Portuguese man who after many years was finally able to buy a house. He was a farmer by nature and by birth but he now worked in a supermarket... his garden was an incredible source of vegetables and fruit strawberries and blueberries as perfect as I've ever seen. There was even a fig tree(not the one in the picture) which had grown crooked over the years and was quite ugly no longer bearing fruit.

The man's son wanted to take an ax to it and plant a new one but the older man attached several wires to the trunk and pulled them tight... he was always checking on the tree and. He attached wires with care always gently but consistently pulling the tree in the right direction. He was very careful he knew he explained that if he pulled to forcefully the limbs would snap. If he did not keep the wires tight enough the limbs would return to their old crooked ways. Patience was the key. After a couple of years the tree pruned and righted was beautiful to behold and it had great deep purple figs in late August

Trees and people have a lot in common.

I'm not the only one who tells stories about fig trees
Luke 13: 6-9.

BTW St. Paul reminds us "Love is patient"