When we see the sorry mess the human race has made of God's creation, we may well wonder whether God ever grows weary with us. The prophet Isaiah reassures us: "about Jerusalem I will not grow weary", and we may understand "Jerusalem" as symbolic of the whole world as God loves it. Apart from this revelation, of course, commonsense doctrine about God, creation and providence, allows us to see that if God did grow weary of the world then, of course, the world would cease to exist.

We may wonder at the greatness of God's love that never grows weary, and learn to appreciate a mystery, which Scripture teaches in various forms: the mystery of God's patience. If God does not grow weary with Jerusalem or with our broken human race, there is a divine purpose here as expressed by Isaiah: "until her integrity shines out like the dawn, and her salvation flames like a torch".

Love is patient and kind, and God loved the world in the gift of Jesus. Jesus, then, is an embodiment of God's love for us and a visible enactment of God's patience with us, that miraculous patience that brings the gift of salvation.