Remember the brokenness of others

For the Angels week of Advent, the pastor preached on the time Elizabeth and Mary first saw each other after becoming pregnant. The third point he made was that God shows his present tense faithfulness. Through Elizabeth he shows his faithfulness to them by giving them the child they so desired; with Mary, he fulfilled his promise of the Messiah for the world.

I know we were supposed to see that God fulfills his promise because He is always present tense faithful to us, but it just isn't always in our timing. To me this is the promise I am waiting on: the husband. I am a long-sufferer. I go through trial and tribulation on a frequent basis.

Those who are long-sufferers most-times have a hard time seeing His present tense faithfulness; especially when one keeps seeing and hearing other receiving their desires.

Long-suffering is to bring about perseverance, character and hope [Romans 5:3-5], but it gets harder and harder every day to hold onto that hope. As we get older, we have to be even more patient when waiting for his faithfulness to appear in a way we can understand, that we can see. The brokenness seeps in and hearts shatter.

The hope we are to gain becomes even harder to see when the greatest desires, and those long awaited promises to be fulfilled by present tense faithfulness, of ours keep going unanswered when at each turn others gain them without difficulty. Long-sufferers deal daily with their tribulations, waiting on His present tense faithfulness to show. Through these difficult times, we are to see His grace, that he is stripping away what we don't need so that we can be stronger.

After all this, we just have to remember that we suffer for a reason. Tribulations are important so that we learn about grace and grow in peace and patience. Character building through suffering is a difficult road that some are called, but we must remember that in the end it's all going to work out because He is ALWAYS present tense faithful, even if we aren't always aware.