A five-minute Christian meditation and lectio divina practice on James 1:2-4, with a reading from Alan Kreider's The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. Day 54 of the Unseen Existences series.
James 1:2-4 (NKJV)
My brethren, count it all joy
when you fall into various trials,
knowing that the testing of your faith
produces patience.
But let patience have its perfect work,
that you may be perfect and complete,
lacking nothing.
Patience obtains all things.
Alan Kreider, from The Patient Ferment of the Early Church
“Patience was not a virtue dear to most Greco-Roman people....
But Christian writers called patience ‘the highest virtue,’
‘the greatest of all virtues,’
the virtue that was ‘particularly Christian.’
The Christians believed that God is patient
and that Jesus visibly embodied patience.
And they concluded that they, trusting in God, should be patient:
not controlling events, not anxious or in a hurry,
and never using force to achieve their ends.”
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