“Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love.” (Ephesians 4:2b NLT)

Humorist Dave Barry says, “A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.”

The same could be said of a perfect world or the perfect family. Created by God and guided by his perfect instructions, there’s only one way to mess things up: People!

The fact is, living with imperfect people requires patience. And I say this as a friend, but you are one of the imperfect people who require patience! Unfortunately, I keep learning that I’m an imperfect person too.

The Bible teaches that patience is the solution for living with someone else’s imperfections. This patience is to flow from the kindness God shows us, so we’re (not so simply) following God’s love.

Colossians 3:12-13 says: “As holy people whom God has chosen and loved, be sympathetic, kind, humble, gentle, and patient. Put up with each other, and forgive each other if anyone has a complaint. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (GW)

The word translated “patience” also could be rendered “longsuffering.” Patience means putting up with one another when we’d rather lose our temper; it means forgiving one another when we’d rather hold a grudge.

It is love in action, for “love is patient.” (1 Corinthians 13:14a NIV)

In addition, patience muzzles our mouths, stopping the murmuring and complaining that so naturally flow from the human tongue. Paul says, “Let us stop criticizing each other. Instead, we should decide never to do anything that would make other Christians have doubts or lose their faith.” (Romans 14:13 GW).

With patience ruling the day, we become stronger through our differences and we develop a godly diversity in our relationships. We no longer require that everyone act and look and think exactly the same way.

Paul saw this as an exciting model of God’s Church: “Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don't see things the way you do. And don't jump all over them every time they do or say something you don't agree with – even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.” (Romans 14:1 MSG)

So what?

• Patience and a critical spirit are mutually exclusive – Even when your complaints are justified, patience pushes and pulls you toward forgiving and forgetting: “A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.” (Proverbs 19:11 NIV)

• You are imperfect – Living with an imperfect person requires patience. You, my friend, are an imperfect person, and there are some people who require patience to live with you! (Think about who they are and thank them today.)

• Let love lead – “Most of all, let love guide your life, for then the whole church will stay together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:14 LB) How open are you to other believers who don’t see things the way you do?

“Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” (Psalm 139:16)

These are the kinds of verses that keep theologians up at night. If God had already recorded every moment of David’s life before he ever lived it, what does that say for his choices? Does that make him a sort of robot? How can he be made responsible for his actions when God already mapped out his life?

I don’t know. To try and find answers to questions like these seems to me an attempt to play God. I go on the assumption that God is operating on a whole different level of engagement than my little pea brain can negotiate. How God can have a person’s life mapped out and still make them responsible for the choices they make is one of those things I have come to just believe even though it doesn’t make sense in my head. There are limitations to being human.

What I can know about this, however, is how significant this makes everything in my life. Nothing is happening to me by accident. My moments were all thought up in the mind of God, and they are all geared toward shaping me for a particular service that no one but I can perform. God uses everything in my life – whatever I’ve experienced, whatever I’ve learned – to make me into a person fit for that which I can do in his Kingdom here on earth. And the same is true for you.

We are not autonomous, isolated individuals – masters of our own fate and servants of no one. We are actually a part of a grand display wherein the lives of billions upon billions are intertwined together. What we do affects those around us, and God has taken all that into account.

Therefore, if my life is that important, and God has already recorded it and mapped it out, doesn’t that make it even more compelling that I find out what it is that he has for me to do? This is not a chore; it’s a privilege and an adventure.

God does not intend to waste anything in my life, or yours. Our talents, gifts, and natural abilities all go together to make someone fit to serve.

Gotta serve somebody

Gotta serve somebody

May be the devil; may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

                                                — Bob Dylan

We may be small, but we are by no means insignificant.