Patience Is a Virtue

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  There is no law against these things! (Galations 5:22,23  NLT)

   I was thinking about a topic for today’s post, and I had asked the Lord for His help.  I prayed and waited in silence for Him to answer.  Evidently, I hadn’t waited long enough before I began to ask when He was going to give me  a topic.   And then, yes after I began to complain, the thought “just came to me.”  Why not write about patience?  Gee, I wonder where that thought came from.  My mind was instantly filled with good examples of my frequent lack of patience.   I can’t claim that I evidence all the fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22,23, but it seems that my weakest just might be patience.

   In today’s world of fast food, microwaves, AI that summarizes things for us, mini-sermons, and Amazon (Why wait, when Amazon will deliver it today.).  I’m not even patient enough to take enough time when I print by hand so that I can read it later.  Are you patient in traffic?  I’m not.   Are you patient in the grocery store?   I’m not.  Are you patient at the DMV?  I’m not.  I have a sneaky question.  Are you paying a little extra for high speed internet so you can download a file a little faster?  I’m not, but then I’ve been known to verbally encourage my computer to speed up when I’m downloading something. 

   But what bothers me most is that I show my impatience to my God.  God, who is the master of correct timing, has to listen to me complain that He doesn’t do things according to my timetable.  If patience were not important to God, He would not have had it listed in the fruit of the Spirit.  He knows that we tend to miss a few things, no, a LOT of things when we aren’t patient.  He knows that we need to learn some things before we jump into an action.  My wife and I did that a number of years ago when we jumped into a ministry before we were adequately prepared to do so.  I think we run past blessings that God has for us because we are too impatient to wait for His timing.  The hurry-up, impatient type of lifestyle we live today keeps us too busy to receive many of God’s blessings that we can enjoy just by “slowing down and smelling the roses.”  

   Patience is, indeed, a virtue, and I apologize to my Lord for allowing my impatience to interfere with what He has for me.