How Patient Is God?

(Patience(Explored) - found here)

“How immense and remarkable is the patience of God! He patiently endures the pagan temples, earthly idols, and idolatrous rites that have been set up by men; these are an insult to God’s majesty and honor.

God makes the day to rise, and the sun to shine equally over the good and the evil. When he waters the earth with showers, no one is excluded from his benefits; he bestows his rains without distinction on the just and the unjust.

We see that God uses an equal patience toward the guilty and the innocent, the religious and the materialistic, the grateful and the ungrateful. At God’s Will, the seasons obey and the elements serve, the winds blow, the fountains flow, the fields offer grain in abundance, the fruits of the vines ripen, the trees are laden with fruit, the groves become green, and the meadows burst into flower.

Although God is provoked by frequent—yes—even continual offenses, he tempers his anger and patiently waits for the day of reckoning, which he has long scheduled. Although immediate vengeance is in his power, he prefers to be long-suffering and compassionate. He waits for man to stop his long course of malice, if it is at all possible. However deeply one is infected with the diseases of error and crime, God waits for man to change, at some time, and be converted to Him, even at a late hour.

‘I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!’ (Ez 18:32). And again: ‘Return to the Lord your God, for he is all tenderness and compassion, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity’ (Joel 2:13).

The blessed apostle Paul calls back the sinner to penance by reminding him: ‘Are you abusing his abundant goodness, patience and tolerance, not realizing that this goodness of God is meant to lead you to repentance? Your stubborn refusal to repent is only adding to the anger God will have towards you on that day of anger, when his just judgments will be made known. He will repay each one as his works deserve’ (Rom 2:4-6).

He says that the judgment of God is just, because it is delayed; it is postponed for a long time, so that care and thought may be taken for man’s eternal life by the long enduring patience of God. Punishment is finally paid by the unfaithful and the sinner when there is no longer possibility of repentance of the sin.”

~St. Cyprian of Carthage