(Im)Perfectly Patient

I’m not a very patient person.

I can’t sit through commercials and will walk the grocery store until a register is free.

I sometimes get bored halfway through a book and read the ending.  Alright, that’s not true.  Usually I’m so into the story I can’t wait for the end.  I have to know now.

I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in one day because I refused to allow myself to be so impatient.  So I just didn’t put it down until I was finished.  Somehow I don’t think that was better because I had to go back and reread so I could appreciate the details.

I don’t usually appreciate the details like I should.

And lately I’ve been really impatient with my Lord.  It doesn’t make for a happy home.

But I want to know now and how and when and where.  I want a blueprint of my life, or at the very least the next few months, and I want to be able to see how we’re going to get through this valley to the other side.

Faith doesn’t work like that.  It’s trusting in the unknown.

I’m not so good with the unknown.

So everyday, and many times a day, I’m having to remind myself that Paul wrote a long time ago about how to combat these “fits of rage” that come with my fear of the unknown.

But the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, PATIENCE, kindness, gentleness, and self-control…..I used to think it was the self-control that would help me cultivate patience, but guess which comes first?

And then we read in our Advent devotion on Monday how God always provides.  Always there’s a ram in the thicket if we’re patient enough to trust in Him.

But sometimes he brings us to the very edge of that dark place before we see the light.