How patience trumps power …

Have you ever thought about what you might do if you could change anything with, literally, a wiggle of your nose?

It wouldn’t have to be something huge. You could just wiggle your nose and the house would be clean. Just wiggle your nose and the laundry would be done and put away. Just wiggle your nose and dinner would be cooked, on the table, and the kitchen already cleaned. Or just wiggle your nose and the yard is mowed. Or the shopping is done.

Just wiggle your nose and you’re successful at work. Or better yet, just wiggle your nose and you have a big bank account so you don’t have to work. Just wiggle your nose and …

Samantha Stephens could make anything happen by wiggling her nose. Well, at least her character on the TV sitcom “Bewitched” could. That was one of the shows in my early childhood we weren’t allowed to watch much of since my dad didn’t like the idea of some of the characters being witches.

What seemed to confuse me at the time was how Samantha’s husband, Darrin, didn’t want Samantha to do anything by magic. He tried (and often failed) to insist that his wife not bring any magic into their home. As a kid, that never made sense to me. If all you had to do was wiggle your nose and you could do just about anything, why wouldn’t you develop your nose-wiggling skills?

Because Proverbs 16:32a says this: “Better to be patient than powerful …”

If all we had to do is wiggle our noses to accomplish most things, or have almost anything we desire, we would have a lot of worldly things and very little character.

When we have the power to produce without effort, we eliminate experience that molds and shapes our character. When we have to forge outcomes from circumstances and work our way to positive results, our character is shaped by the challenges we have to endure.

In other words, having to exercise patience shapes us into better people than if we simply had the power to make things happen with the wiggle of a nose.

How is the need for exercising patience an opportunity for you to grow? How has applying patience in the circumstances of your life made you a better person? What do you need to apply greater patience to in your life today?

Scotty