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Every day brings us an array of things that try our patience. You buy something that needs to be assembled and the instructions don't make sense. You're out on a golf course and you hit a straight drive; but when you get to where it ought to be lying, it's not there. You toss 16 socks into a clothes dryer and you get only 15 back.

As God's chosen ones, says Paul, clothe yourselves with patience. When we are clothed with patience we can absorb nuisances. We can absorb them without fussing over them. We can absorb them the way a good cotton shirt absorbs a few drops of water from a sprinkler.

But how about persons who annoy us? Well, we have to absorb some of them, too. Some are strangers. Pokey drivers in the left lane. People who let their dogs bark all night. Or the person ahead of us in the 15-item express line at the supermarket. This person puts 19 items on the belt, chats with the checkout clerk, fishes for a checkbook only after everything has been rung up, and then wants to review the bill.

Strangers try our patience in lots of little ways, but they're no match for members of our own family. The prime cases of annoyance are domestic. "When two humans have lived together for a while," says C. S. Lewis, "it usually happens that each has facial expressions and tones of voice that are almost unendurable to the other."

I think we understand. It's not that your family member does anything wrong, exactly. It's just that once in a while she lifts her eyebrows in a certain way that drives you nuts. It's just that he whines even when he's not complaining.

As God's chosen ones, says Paul, bear with one another. Clothe yourselves with patience. We need this piece of clothing, don't we? We need it to absorb the little drizzles of acid rain, the ordinary fallout of working and living together. We need patience in order to manage annoyances and the low-level anger that accompanies them.

A big part of good spiritual hygiene has to do with controlling our anger. Have you ever noticed that when Paul wants to describe life outside of Christ, he often describes an angry life? What do you find out there, out beyond the reach of Christ? Paul says you find anger, wrath, slander, abusive talk. You find envy, quarreling, gossip, hostility, factions, and strife. You find war and rumors of war. You find split churches, broken marriages, fractured friendships. Everybody is so angry!

That's life outside of Christ, and some of that life is in our churches and in our homes. It's angry life. It's angry politics and hostile sports and vengeful movies. It's angry talk shows and music with an attitude. It's "hired guns with law degrees," as somebody once put it—bright people who go to law school because they are permanently teed off and want to get their anger licensed.

Put it away, says Paul. Put it to death. Take off all those angry old clothes and put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with patience.

Patience means anger control. It means having a long fuse and a short memory where irritants are concerned. Patient people are hard to provoke. Their temper can absorb a lot before they "lose it."

The Greek word for patience here, makrothymia, suggests having a large capacity for absorbing irritants without letting them paralyze you. Here's a way to think about it: patience is like good motor oil. It doesn't remove all the contaminants. It just puts them into suspension so they don't get into your works and seize them up. Patient people have, so to speak, a large crankcase. They can put a lot of irritants into suspension.

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February 8 1999, Vol. 43, No. 2