Patience Can Wait

Apparently it’s been an arduous journey getting from the house to the car most school mornings.  I’d say, “We’re leaving now.”  Pause.  “We’re getting in the car now.”  Pause, pause.  It could be a measly three minutes, but my Minor Irritations of Life button had been pressed.  One day I blurted out, “You know, I don’t have that many years left in my life.  I don’t want to spend them waiting.  I’d appreciate some hustling here.”  I got a half-smile from one of the kids, as if saying, “Good luck with that, Mom.”

This is the part where you say, “Wow, lady, get a life!  Show a little patience.”  Rebuke wholeheartedly acknowledged and accepted.

It’s no accident that patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.  I’ve tried justifying the lack of it.  “I’m not impatient, I’m time-efficient.”  Right.  “I have better things to do than wait.”  Oh, really?  No matter how you slice it, it still becomes all about me.  And that is just wrong.

Lord, have mercy!

You, Lord, are the definitive of mercy.  You are the author of patience.  Please hit the off switch to this irritable attitude, hard, if necessary.  Forgive me, and gently, if possible, turn on the patience switch in my heart.  

We, ourselves, don’t muster up patience.  It’s produced by the Holy Spirit and not by our own efforts.  We get to choose to receive it.  Then practice it.  When I attempt to be patient on my own it ends up looking more like passivity, apathy, stuffed emotions or a volcano about to erupt.  Not what I understand godly patience to be.  Maybe you can relate.

Practicing patience completes a part of us where we are, shall we say, less than perfect.  We get to respond to an old situation in a new way.  You and I are always a work in progress.  If we ever stop needing God to flip some switches that make us more like Jesus, He’ll probably just take us on Home.

You know, most school mornings are easier now.  You can get a lot of mileage out of a little patience.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.  Galatians 5:22-23