Perseverance

Perseverance

- from the book of Bishop Soc Villegas:

"Love like Jesus, Thoughts of the heart..."

The take-home word for today is perseverance.
What is perseverance?

Perseverance is not closing our eyes and
crying and bringing our hands together and saying to God,
"Lord, I depend on you completely."
That is not perseverance.
That is dramatics.
Perseverance is not simply saying our prayers over and over again.
That is implied repetition.

What is perseverance? Let me use this example.

There is a huge piece of rock in the middle of a running stream, rough-edged,

and if one falls on it, one's skin will tear.
But because that rough rock is in the middle of a running stream,
as water passes through it, through months & years and even centuries,
that rock becomes smooth with the passing of water.
That is perseverance.

Perseverance is to allow time to pass without counting that it has passed.

Perseverance is trusting that we will get to the goal of a smoothened rock,
even if it would take thousands of years to smoothen the rock
with water passing through it from all sides.
That is perseverance.

Perseverance is not looking at mistakes but calling those mistakes learning experiences.

For people who persevere, there is no such a thing as a mistake.
For people who persevere there is only a lesson to be learned all the time.
For people who are persevering, defeat can be disappointing but defeat is never shattering.
For people who are persevering, there is no such thing as a stumbling block.
There are only stepping-stones to the mountain.

We pray for perseverance, not only for perseverance to get our petitions granted
but also for perseverance to do good that we are supposed to do - unrecognized, unappreciated.

We must be good because it is our nature to be good.