259th Meditation
“The Lord is tenderness and pity, slow to anger, full of faithful love” (Ps 145:8).
One of the wonderful qualities of our Father is His long-suffering. He waits patiently for us. Again and again He offers people the possibility of conversion, and He fights until the last moment to save them.
Long ago human beings would have brought judgment upon themselves, but our Father’s love urges Him to wait perseveringly and patiently, thus showing them His long-suffering. Our Father pursues one goal: to save mankind. He does not come in His “fierce anger” (Hos 11:9), but as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29).
Our Father does not wait because of an insecure or fearful attitude, which perhaps we ourselves are familiar with when it comes to making decisions. In the case of the Lord, on the other hand, long-suffering and waiting come from the steadfastness of His love. He carries out His plan of salvation with extreme perseverance and patience.
If it were not so, how many times would He have annihilated the Earth, each time that we, in our thoughtlessness and tendency to self-destruction, offended Him again and again with grave sins! If our Father were not “slow to anger, full of faithful love” how could we resist?
These divine qualities are far beyond our human nature, and we can contemplate and experience them with deep gratitude and admiration. However, by God’s grace, we too become capable of imitating them. If we want to become perfect like our Heavenly Father-as Jesus urges us to do-then we must adopt His way of being and acting. What a blessing this will be for the people we meet on our life’s journey!