God's patient waiting is highlighted in this Sunday's reading from the First Letter of Peter. After waiting patiently for six years, the people of Baghdad celebrated the reopening of their beloved National Museum Monday.

Looters had carried away priceless antiquities while American troops largely stood by in the chaos following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. At the time Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had famously dismissed the looting by saying, "Stuff happens."

Though the museum has been reopened on a restricted basis, well over half the exhibition halls are still closed. Thousands of works from its collection of antiquities and art-some of civilization's earliest objects-remain lost.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki pushed to reopen the museum-against the advice of his own culture ministry-as a sign of Iraqi progress. "It was a rugged wave and strong black wind that passed over Iraq, and one of the results was the destruction that hit this cultural icon," Maliki declared in a dedication ceremony that was shrouded in dispute and secrecy until the last minute. "We have stopped this black wind, and we have resumed the process of reconstruction."

Welcoming diplomats as a bagpipe ensemble played in the garden outside, Iraq's minister of state for tourism and antiquities, Qahtan al-Jibouri, said Iraq wanted visitors "to see that Baghdad is still the same as it was in their eyes and has not turned to ruins, as the enemies of life wanted."

Museum workers who witnessed the looting and endured a closing of nearly six years were elated simply to have company again in what for years were deserted galleries.

"You can tell by our faces how we feel," said Thamir Rajab, a conservation specialist, beaming as he pointed out several of his favorite sculptures. The staff learned two months ago that the museum would reopen in February. It then crammed two years' work into those two months, Rajab said.

"We did the best we could," he explained, wistful that the museum remained less than what it once was. "This is what we could do now. God willing, one day we will do more."

Source: An article by Steven Lee Myers for the New York Times