Building Our Spiritual Muscles

Many of us wish that we could be kinder and more patient — but how do we develop those qualities? It might help to think of patience and kindness as muscles that we need to exercise.

People who want to increase their muscle strength do exercises that cause their muscles to deal with higher levels of resistance or weight. In the process, muscle fibers are weakened, and the body repairs these fibers by fusing them, which increases the mass and size of the muscles.

The pandemic has given us many opportunities to practice patience and kindness, to the extent that we sometimes feel we are at our breaking point. Being isolated with our family or community members for months on end has been challenging, and we can get quite frustrated with people who believe differently than we do about vaccinations, wearing of masks, and social distancing.

Nonetheless, as we look back over the past year and a half, it is likely that we have become kinder and more patient than we ever thought possible. As our patience and kindness muscles have worn thin, they have been fused by God’s grace into strengths that we can utilize beyond the pandemic.

Like all our muscles, patience and kindness will atrophy if they are not used regularly. Therefore, we need to keep in practice by performing “random kindness and senseless acts of beauty,” as suggested by Anne Herbert. At the same time, remember the adage to be careful what you pray for — because if you pray for patience, you will likely be given many opportunities to practice it!