02/04/2024
Being patient is difficult. Do you remember the old antennas we used to capture TV signals? One person would wiggle the ears on the TV until he or she finally found a good signal. A great deal of patience was required. And then, we had to watch the commercials on TV. No fast forwarding. And if you wanted to watch a whole episode of any show, you had to set aside a scheduled time to watch it. No recording devises to help us manage our TV time. Remember waiting for someone to pick you up from somewhere? Without a cell phone you had to make prior arrangements and hope your ride remembered to come and get you. Sometimes you had to wait.
Today, we tend to be impatient. If our computer takes longer than 3 seconds to boot up, we wonder what’s wrong with our internet connection. We want our food delivered now. We don’t want to take the time to prepare a meal. No one wants to wait inside a bank for a teller when there is an ATM machine. Patience is an old-fashioned concept.
And yet God teaches us patience. When we pray, we learn patience. God answers our prayers in God’s own time. A.B. Simpson in a sermon printed in Our Daily Bread said this: "Beloved, have you ever thought that someday you will not have anything to try you, or anyone to vex you again? There will be no opportunity in heaven to learn or to show the spirit of patience, forbearance, and longsuffering. If you are to practice these things, it must be now. Yes, each day affords countless opportunities to learn patience. Let's not waste them.”
Next time you are speeding to your next activity and the person in front if you is traveling a little more slowly than you would like, take time to thank God for an extra moment in which to experience patience.
