Forbear: The Always Perplexing Antidote

“He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.”

John Steinbeck

Forbear: To refrain, restrain, to resist the desire to bray that every day must go your way. To be slow to rage but to stay engaged, to patiently endure because the future is sure.

The sixth verb in our series, An Alphabet of Life, addresses the question, “How am I supposed to act in the face of that?”

The Conundrum

Do I dare to forbear
in this nightmare,
my world on the brink
of awful

I waffle…

It seems so strange,
and hard to arrange,
to respond with love,
(the kind from above)
when goodness is throttled
and hubris is coddled
and bottled for all to drink.

What is my calling
when the crowd is appalling,
and my rope feels so slender,
my heart bruised and tender,
and temperamental?

Stay gentle.

Be patient.
Endure and forbear,
with prayer.
And remember:
Your Defender is great
and will frustrate
hate!

It’s easy to doubt
what you can’t figure out.
Trust in the story
He tells, for glory
Is the ending in mind,

so be kind.

For this time you were made,
His goodness displayed
in the way you behave–
so be brave!
Forget the cost
For nothing is truly lost.
Leave one task on your list:

Persist

Forbear or despair

So, what do you do about that person who baffles, bewilders, or bedevils you? One day, frustrated by my inability to fix the world, I received a merciful deflation of my ego. God whispered, “You don’t have to figure everyone out, you know. Just love them.”

And what does that mean? “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” the Apostle Paul insists, for love remembers: This moment, this crisis, this reason for outrage is not the final answer.

As declared in the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, precursor to our more well-known Bill of Rights, “It is the mutual duty of all [citizens] to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity, towards each other.” What would the Founding Fathers think of us now?

Consider the words of a nineteenth century Scottish pastor, George MacDonald. “Freedom is to be like thee, face and heart: To know it, Lord, I must be as thou art.” And how does God free us to resemble him?

By giving us each other to forbear!

1 Corinthians 13:7 Galatians 6:9-10 Ephesians 4:1-3 Colossians 3:13

Thank you for joining us here! You can subscribe to this series by scrolling to the very bottom of this blog. Next time in An Alphabet of Life: Wisdom Learned in the Verbs? G is for Give.