Passionate Patience
I am one of those people that try to fit way too many things into any given block of time. Always believing to a fault that everything will run smoothly, according to plan, the quickest and most thorough way it could happen so that everything I want to get done will be accomplished. Only to set myself up for continued disappointment and a sense of failure when it all doesn’t fit and I can’t accomplish all that I hoped. This usually leads to a self-lecture on better efficiency and often a self-berating on “why can’t you get it together”.
Because of this I hate waiting on anything-cars in front of me, costumer service representatives, return lines, my kid’s practices getting out late, tellers, cashiers, even computers. I am impatient. I often hear that old Alabama country song playing in my mind. “Oh I’m in a hurry to get things done, Oh I rush and rush until life’s no fun.”
Last week the clerk checking me out at the grocery store could not get the new roll of receipt tape to load. He tried and tried and I waited and waited. I felt a strong conviction not to act out in my impatience by switching lines, huffing, or constantly shifting my weight to draw attention to the fact that I was standing there waiting. Instead I extended words that weren’t mine, grace that wasn’t mine, and I began to ask him about his life, his job, his family and in so doing I learned that the last year and a half of his life had been spent between here and Saint Jude’s trying to beat the battle against cancer his 10 year old boy faced. His wife had to quit her job to care for him and his son could not longer go to school or play sports. Everything else in life stops when something like a cancer diagnosis drops unexpectantly into your life. I know this well. It stopped when we were teenagers and our mother was diagnosed with colon cancer and it stopped when I was 31 caring for my 3 young children and facing a long battle with breast cancer. So of course with trembling hands it took my grocery store clerk several attempts to load his receipt tape. There were a few more important things vying for his thoughts and attention. What slowed me down a few minutes has slowed him down for two years. “Perspective”-what we miss when we are always in a hurry, always concerned with our own to-do lists, our own priorities and concerns.
God’s “perspective” on what I should be quick about is a lot different then my own ideas of quick meals, quick clean up, quick load of laundry, quick run to the store, quick phone call, a quick work-out so that I can fit it all in. I don’t want to lose a minute in getting it all done or it won’t fit. That’s why I let interruptions in that plan fluster me, but what God tells us to be quick about and not lose time in is something very different and maybe not as easily measured if we are ok with that tension.
“Don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness and generous love each dimension fitting into and developing the others with these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, not a day will pass without it’s reward as you mature in your experience with your Master Jesus without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you.” 2 Peter 1:5-9MSG
I’m passionate about a lot of things but patience isn’t one of them. There’s such truth in that coin phrase, “good things come to those who wait.” Spiritually speaking it could be said this way,
“Eternal treasure and reward come to those who are passionately patient.”
What is behind my irrational panic over wasted time or inefficient use of time? Why the constant rush, the hurry to push to fit it all in? Because I am afraid there’s not enough of it-“time”. That if I waste it or it’s wasted for me then I won’t be able to fit in the important things. Yet this promise says if I passionately pursue patience among other virtues instead of pursuing productivity then no time will be wasted, “no grass will grow under my feet, no day will pass without reward.” That is a promise I want to hang onto. Instead of laying on my pillow at night thinking through whether I’ve been productive enough and gotten enough done I can lay on my pillow and look for the reward of what’s right in front of me. A sympathetic connection with another human being living though the pains of cancer, a loving husband to share life with, a healthy physical body, 3 amazing children that share their experiences with me, rewarding friendships, the beauty of nature, and the joy of ministry opportunities with Kingdom significance. That’s a life full of reward and worth waiting for!
2017/08/31 at 8:22 pm