Boy, has it been one of those days.
You know what I'm talking about.
The printer goes haywire on you. The person you thought you could depend on tells you the opposite of what you want to hear. Your friend spills cider down your leg. You forget how many projects you have due the upcoming week.
Cue Colossians 3:12-15: "Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."
I'm not naturally a Colossians 3 type of girl. In fact, I literally had to hole myself in my room this evening in order NOT to start throwing things at certain people in my vicinity. I wish I could tell you one by one how many times I bit my tongue and asked how someone else was doing instead of complaining; and still, I would call that Holy Spirit divine intervention, since I felt like glaring instead.
It is almost funny to think of my own life in comparison to the man who wrote Colossians. This is the same man of 2 Corinthians 6:3-10, the chapter which calls itself in the NIV "Paul's Hardships":
"We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything."
Pain, sorrow, sleeplessness, trouble. Hardship and distress. YET patience, rejoicing, the knowledge of "possessing everything"?! Here I am complaining about printer ink!
Paul wasn't calling out to the church of Colosse with a snobbish sneer, telling them to put on righteousness without doing it himself. He had endured imprisonment, and was enduring it still even at the writing of the letter of Colossians, sending the letter off from a Roman prison through the hand of Epaphrus, a fellow servant in Christ. His response to the pain and frustration he endured wasn't anger or annoyance, however. It was patience. He encouraged others from his prison cell to continue the work of God. He thanked others who were succeeding in spreading the Word and prayer. He was a light despite the potential annoyance of his imprisonment.
That is definitely clothing oneself in holiness.
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