# Praying for Patience!

Source: https://dairycoach.com/praying-for-patience/
Published: 2011-02-01
Author: Tom Wall

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If being patient was a crime, punishable with jail time… I’m pretty sure I’d remain a free man.

This past weekend, my patience was once again put to the test.  And of all places… it was at mass on Sunday morning.  You see, most weekends you can expect a typical mass at this particular church to last about fifty minutes, not seventy-five.  But this weekend, it turns out a visiting priest had a lot of stories to tell and a captive congregation to share them with.  As soon as mass began, I knew we were in for a long morning when the opening greeting lasted twelve minutes… yes, I timed it.  On top of that, the homily lasted just as long and consisted of eighteen different stories.  And yes, I counted those too.  But now before you suggest that I’m going to burn in hell… trust me, if that’s the case, it will be for a lot worse than keeping tabs on mass time!

So what about you?  When it comes to the virtue we call *patience*, how well do you do?  Does waiting in line make you restless and fidgety?  Do you get irritated when things don’t get done in the time you expect them?  Are you anxiously awaiting this weekend’s Super Bowl game like a kid on Christmas Eve?  Yeah… me too.

But what do we gain by growing impatient over things that aren’t progressing as we’d like them to?  Would we reap a bigger payback if everything were to go our way in the hurried timeframe that we’d prefer?  I suppose the answer to that last question is probably yes.  After all, for most of us results-driven businesspeople… *time is money*.  And maybe that’s what drives us to be this way.  But at the same time, it seems we don’t only limit our impatience to professional endeavors.  No, our impatience tends to spill over into almost every aspect of life.

Unfortunately, impatience is a trait that many of us have been ‘fine tuning’ in many areas of our lives for a long time.  And it seems that a large segment of society has come to embrace and even capitalize on our impatient ways.  Express lanes, fast food, instant coffee, and movies on-demand help us satisfy our ‘need for speed’.

And I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t wait for the economy to finally turn around.  But while it continues to limp along, what can we learn about our business, our decisions, and ourselves as we face these difficult challenges?  I’m a firm believer that all of the events and circumstances in our lives come with a purpose and a potential lesson.  If tough times and obstacles didn’t persist for a little while, then what purpose would they serve?

And maybe that’s why good things come as a result of patient waiting.  Whether its nine months or four seasons, God takes His time to create and deliver good things.  As I repeatedly checked my watch throughout mass on Sunday, I had to continually remind myself that God’s “will be done…”  It always is.