What is patience?

In First Corinthians 13:4 it says: “LOVE IS PATIENT, …”

“PATIENCE: THE ABILITY TO COUNT DOWN BEFORE BLASTING OFF!”

“COURAGE LOST,  EVERYTHING LOST.”

 Sometimes we are reading things and hearing things and don’t get the meaning, the full meaning. Maybe it happens even quite often.

It happened to me long ago in Germany, and when I say long ago, I mean long ago. The above translated into German is: “Mut verloren, alles verloren.” If I remember correctly it is part of a poem or rhyme, I had to learn from memory while going to school. The summary of that poem is that you can lose the “lot,” but if you lose your courage, you have lost everything, really everything.

I am actually glad that the poem is still on my mind.

Now, recently I came across: “You can tell how big a person is by what it takes to discourage him.” Those words were not long ago such a blessing to me, that I repeated them again and again and I can say them now from memory. In fact I got  so excited about them that I mentioned them to others.

And they are a blessing now.

They were a blessing this morning, when I waited for someone to come home, so that I could go out. When I waited and waited, I was thinking: “You can tell how big a person is by what it takes to discourage him.”

“Mut verloren, alles verloren,” (“Courage lost, everything lost.”) I am learning more and more what that means, or have a grasped the full meaning already?

Do you know what? “You can tell how big a person is by what it takes to discourage him, fits every situation.

“Courage lost, everything lost!”

A young man came towards me and shook my hand and thanked me warmly, while I was sitting in the coffee shop enjoying my cup of coffee.

Eventually I caught on why all this was happening.

Some time before I had picked up a mobile phone from under one of the tables and handed it in to the proprietor of the shop.

The owner of the mobile phone was gone, but before I left the coffee shop I mentioned to another customer that I forgot to tell the young man why he got his phone back. It was not only because “honesty is the only policy,” but because I am one who fears God.

And one more thing: While drinking my coffee it came to my mind that it would be really good to see the lost phone returned to the rightful owner.