Daily Devotion:

Title: A Patient Man

Date: January 18, 2013

At 4:30 on an afternoon in 1934, Panos walked home from his factory shift, kissed Georgia, his wife, and descended the cellar stairs, stopping first at the top to click on the lights. Downstairs in the cellar sat his wife’s manual washing machine with a pair of wooden rollers on top, lines and lines of clothesline with his young family’s laundry drying, a wash basin, a clothes-folding table, soap, the family commode, and a wooden bulkhead door that led to their backyard garden and the grape arbor. Panos looked down at his homemade toolbox with its long dowel handle. His toolbox held his hand tools – a hammer, a handsaw, a hand-turned drill, two screwdrivers, a wooden fold-out ruler, plus a nail can, a screw can, two large hinges, a door latch and a keyed padlock. He looked across the cellar at his new 35-gallon and 45-gallon, empty wine barrels. Next to his two barrels stood two saw horses and a stack of pine boards, all of which – both barrels and boards – he had carried on his shoulders, making several trips over several city blocks, over several evenings. That evening, Panos started to build a wooden closet where he planned to store his barrels, and ferment his wine. America’s Prohibition had forced Panos to wait a decade to make his own wine.

He had to learn patience. 

Let’s Pray: Dear God, teach me patience, and help me bear “provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, or irritation.” Amen.

Today’s Thought Is from Saint Francis de Sales: “Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.”