IN HIS BOOK, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, spiritual writer Kent Nerburn tells the story of when he first became a cab-driver in Minneapolis working the night shift back in the 1980s. He had no idea how his cab would become a “rolling confessional” as passengers would spill out their stories from the back seat.

One night, he found himself parked outside a fourplex at two-thirty in the morning, waiting for his fare. Only one light was on in the building. Many drivers would have honked once or twice then driven away. But Nerburn had a different way of thinking. What if the person was poor and depended on taxis? What if the person needed his help in some way? How would I want a driver in my situation to treat my mother and father?

He got out of the cab, went to the door, and knocked. A frail voice answered, “Just a minute.” Eventually, the door opened to reveal an elderly woman dragging a suitcase. She was obviously vacating her home; behind her, Nerburn could see that the walls were bare and the furniture was draped with sheets.

He took her suitcase and helped her into the cab. She gave him the address of her destination and asked him to drive through downtown. He told her that this wasn’t the fastest or most direct route. But she said she wasn’t in a hurry. She was going into hospice and had no one else to care for her. She wanted to see some of her childhood haunts one last time.

Quietly, Nerburn reached over and shut off the meter, deciding to take her wherever she wanted to go, no matter how long it took. They drove for two hours as she regaled him with stories of her childhood. Eventually, she grew weary, and asked to be taken to the hospice facility, where she was met by orderlies and put into a wheelchair. Though she offered to pay him for his time, he refused, bending down to hug her instead. She held him tightly and thanked him for making a few moments of joy possible. Then they wheeled her away, and the doors closed behind her.

Nerburn writes, “For the remainder of the day, I could hardly talk. What if the woman had gotten a driver who had been angry or abusive or impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? What if I had been in a foul mood and refused to engage the woman in conversation? How many other moments like that had I missed or failed to grasp?”

Nerburn’s story is one of the best and most humane examples of patience and kindness I’ve read. Reading his story, I’m left wondering two things. First, why is it that even in our closest relationships, let alone with strangers, we so often leave the meter running?

And second: what would happen if God were the same way with us?

FIRST CORINTHIANS 13 begins and ends on the note of the primacy of love over spiritual gifts. With that as a frame, Paul describes the nature of a true and godly love to the Corinthians — beginning with what love does, and inside of that, describing what love doesn’t do. It was a gentle way of prodding the Corinthians to recognize their own unloving behavior and showing them to what heights they might aspire instead.

If you had to explain what a God-honoring kind of love was all about, where would you begin? For Paul, I imagine, the answer was obvious: you begin with the character of God. When he says in verse 4 that love is patient and kind, he’s not just pulling some random qualities of human niceness out of the air (though the word translated as “kind” can indeed suggest niceness). With these two words together, he’s probably thinking of related aspects of God’s character that are repeatedly offered in Scripture as demonstrations of his covenant love and faithfulness.

The word translated as “patient” here could be rendered as “long-suffering” or “slow to anger” instead. When applied to God, it suggests a holy restraint in the face of his people’s rebellion and bad behavior. Think of everything that God had to put up with after rescuing his people from the clutches of Pharaoh. Despite their undeniably miraculous escape — the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea — it didn’t take long before the people were complaining about their situation and making noises about going back to Egypt. And yet God continued to provide for them, despite the complaints.

In idiomatic English, we might say that God has “a long fuse.” God even characterizes himself this way when he reveals his glory to Moses on Mount Sinai, after the disastrous debacle of the Golden Calf:

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. (Exod 34:6-7, NIV)

Yes: a holy God must punish sin. But in compassion and grace, God is “slow to anger.” The passage from Exodus is, of course, in Hebrew; but the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint uses the same word for “slow to anger” that Paul uses for “patient.” Despite his people’s continually rebellious and ungrateful behavior, God is patient, forgiving, and “abounding in love,” where “love” translates a Hebrew word that is used over and over to describe God’s nature. It’s a rich concept that can be translated as “mercy,” “goodness,” “faithfulness,” or, yes, “lovingkindness.”

Thus, as Paul begins his description of love, I believe that he begins in the best place possible: with a reminder of the loving nature of God himself. This is who God is, he seems to say, and therefore this is who we are called to be as those who worship him.

What would change in our attitude and behavior if we were to take that to heart?