Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

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Seriously, I must have spent way too much time in the sun last week. I had written this post and published it...however, I never checked to see if it actually made it to my blog. Apparently the day I wrote it and set it to self-publish, I must have thought the date was July 6, 2010. This poor little post has been sitting in my post box, waiting for next July to role around so it can publish itself. Oops.

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"You need to be patient and wait."

"Please show patience and stand in line quietly."

"Patience, please."

If someone were to trail behind me and keep tally of how many times I ask my children to display a little bit of patience (usually said request shows a tad of impatience on my own part), the poor person's tally sheet would be full by the end of the day.

I realized that although I often request patience from my children, I rarely take the opportunity to teach them how to display such a trait.

As usual, we begin our time studying the Fruit of the Spirit by reading the verse that is leading our path of study this summer. Then we read two different bible stories. First we read the story of Noah and Ark, discussing how patient Noah and his family had to be while waiting for the rain to stop and for dry land to appear. Next we read the story of Abraham and Sarah, waiting for the Lord to give them a child.

After discussing how hard it is to wait and how we must show patience in such a time of waiting, we played the always fun, slightly chaotic (especially when dealing with young kids) game of "Red Light, Green Light." I intended for us to play "Mother, May I?" as well, however I realized that there would be no getting back on track with these two little ones if we had another rousing game played in our living room.

We forged on with a craft, choosing to do a simple water coloring of Noah's Ark. Although not the most glamorous of craft activities, water coloring is a great way to show children how they must be patient. Patient in using careful brush strokes, patient in sharing the water colors, and patient in waiting for the finished product to dry.

I feel that my children now have a foundation of understanding when asked to be patient. They do no always demonstrate such a quality and said patience might only last about 23 seconds some days, but they understand the concept just a bit better than before.

Maybe I understand it just a bit more as well...