God-Like Lovers Series

Homer, 900 years before Christ, wrote his famous epic The Odyssey. The hero Ulysses

had been gone for 10 years, and his faithful wife Penelope had been waiting even though

there were many suitors trying to win her love. Finally she feared he must be dead, and so

she promised she would marry the man who could shoot an arrow through 12 rings using the

bow of her husband. In the meantime Ulysses finally returned and heard of the trial for his

wife's hand in marriage.

He disguised himself as a beggar and went to the place of the trial. One by one the

suitors stepped forth, but they found they were unable to bend the bow. Then Ulysses came

forward and said, "Beggar as I am, I was once a soldier and there is still some strength in

these old limbs of mine. Let me try." The others jeered him, but Penelope consented for

him to try. With ease he bent his old bow and sped the arrow unerring through the 12 rings.

Penelope knew instantly, and she shouted, "Ulysses!" She threw herself into his arms. This

story is one of the first, "They lived happily ever after," stories in human literature. It had a

happy ending because both Ulysses and Penelope had a love for each other that was filled

with the quality of patience.

In any great love story you read, or see in a movie, the key ingredient that leads to a

happy ending is this virtue of patience. If the story is a tragedy, and does not end happily, it

is often due to impatience. Gerald Kennedy, one of the great preachers of the 20th century,

said, "As one grows older, one comes to the conclusion that more lives are destroyed by

impatience than any other sin." This is illustrated by history. Lucy Lambert Hale, the

daughter of Senator Hale from New Hampshire, was the most ravishing beauty in

Washington D. C. when Lincoln was president. She was the talk of the town, and many

famous men dated her. One went on to be a senator; another was justice Oliver Wendell

Holmes of the Supreme Court.

The 24 year old John came along and won the heart of this 23 year old beauty. It seemed

a perfect match except for one thing. John was very impatient with her, and he demanded

his own way always. They quarreled all the time, and even through Lincoln's second

inaugural address. Things got even worse when Lucy danced with Robert Lincoln, the

president's oldest son. Then came the straw that broke the camel's back. Lincoln appointed

Lucy's father to be Ambassador to Spain, and she went with him. Later she married Will

Chandler who was a Harvard man and Senator. John's impatience lost him a woman that he

loved, and his reputation forever after, for he let his angry impatience lead him to murder.

John was none other than John Wilkes Booth, the man who shot Lincoln. Love gone soar is

behind much of the tragedy of history, and love usually goes soar because of impatience.

The first thing we need to see is that everyone has some problems in relationships. You

can't have a dog or cat who does not at some point make you angry because of something

stupid or destructive they do. In a fallen world all relationships have problems of some kind.

It is the price you pay to avoid total aloneness. So you will have problems with relatives,

friends, neighbors, and you will have problems with your mate. It is inevitable. We have no

examples of marriage in the Bible that are problem free. The first one should have been

perfect, but it was not, and Adam and Eve set the stage for all human relationships to follow.

Even God had endless problems with His bride Israel, and Jesus has had no end of them with

His bride the church. The perfect marriage will not be experience until all evil is defeated,

and we enter the sin free environment of eternity.

This ought to be clue as to why patience is vital to happiness in time. If you are going to

give up and run out on a relationship because it is imperfect, you are going to spend your life

running, for that is the only kind of relationship there is. There are limits, of course, and

everyone recognizes there are sick relationships where the only cure is to dissolve them.

There are far fewer, however, then the divorce statistics in our culture would indicate.

Impatience destroys love, and this is a major problem in our world today.

The reason marriages use to last was because couples knew it took time to work out

problems and adjust to each other. The reason they do not last today is because couples