Specific Heat Capacity and Patience

I put a pot of water on the stove the other day to make some pasta, and as I waited for the water to boil, my inner engineering nerd made an appearance as I started thinking about the specific heat capacity of water and how it relates to patience.

For those of you who aren't so physics-inclined, the specific heat capacity of a material is the amount of heat energy energy required to raise the temperature of a unit mass of that material by one degree Kelvin (or Celsius).

In other words:

c = q/(mΔT)

with units J/(K*kg)

where
c = specific heat capacity
q = heat energy applied to the system (J)
m = mass (kg)
ΔT = change in temperature (K)

As I thought about specific heat capacity, I realized it describes "patience" remarkably well.  When things don't go your way, how much frustration can you handle before you start getting angry...or boil?  To be patient then is to have a very high (figurative) specific heat capacity.

The thing with specific heat capacity is, it's intrinsic to that material.  It doesn't change with amount of material or what your starting temperature is.  You can't do anything to change it...except to transform your material into another.

In the same way, how patient I am isn't dependent on the circumstances.  I can't say, "I would have been more patient, but he was super aggravating."  Rather, whatever he did only served to reveal the pre-existing limits of my patience.

I can't change how patient I am, but thankfully the Holy Spirit can and is slowly transforming me (if I let him!) into the woman God created me to be.  The Bible confirms patience as evidence of His work in our lives in Galatians 5:22: "But the fruit of his work in our lives is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."  May He increase your specific heat capacity as well.