Love as a Verb

So I'm currently reading Joshua, because I decided to real Samuel, and it starts with "After the death of Joshua", which made me realize I don't know how Joshua died. I mean, it's perfectly reasonable to assume he died; if he had not, it'd be fair to say I'd be more than a little shell shocked. Anyway, I decided to read Joshua. It was upon doing so that I became exceedingly grateful that God, for the most part, grew out of His "smite" phase. I mean, He was just offing people like none other back in the Old Testament. I guess having a son softens you up a bit. I bet Jesus is sitting next to Him saying "Dad, chill out. Deep breath. Count to ten. Give 'em grace." I know I could definitely not be so forgiving. I mean, growing up, I had an ant farm. It was super gross and my mom hated it. It was a terrible present from my cousin. Now I took care of those ants and fed them and watched them, and had some sort of wacky power over them, I guess... and if they would've like, caused a revolt, I must say, I would've been deeply hurt. Now if they'd mocked, tortured, and killed my son, carried him into their little tunnels and completely ostracized him, I would have done nothing less than throw their stupid plastic box right out the window. But loved them? Fat chance. (not to mention they were ants).
To be fair, I only had that stupid ant farm for maybe a week before I realized how completely boring ants are. Now, we as humans, I guess we're not so boring... but just think of how tiring it must be to watch the people you created and raised and took care of and built a wonderful home for repeatedly mess up and slander you and break your heart thousands of times over?
Much worse than watching my ants crawl through the same tunnels day in and day out and not GET anywhere. You see, I didn't create my ants, I didn't even really care for them much... and they probably weren't even really aware of my presence in their little ant lives. We're not like that. We're aware of God. I didn't give my ants a little ant Bible, I didn't perform little ant miracles. God is a constant force in our lives, and yet we continue to hurt him... and he just sits by and waits. He loves us so much that he just waits. Waits for us to smarten up. He has a lot of faith in us, for a group of people who don't seem to put a lot of faith in Him.
What I was getting at originally, I think, is that I'm so grateful that God isn't quite as vengeful as he used to be. And we should all be grateful. And show our gratefulness by just listening to Him, for ONCE. Because eventually, even though you don't think it matters much, (since we have SUCH a forgiving God), one day it is GOING to matter. One day, God is gonna go all Old Testament on your butt.
Alright,
That's all I wanted to say.