Listen When He Speaks, May 2018: Patience

When I was younger, quite a bit younger, I recognized how the microwave was continuing to change the way my generation approached waiting. Our grandparents experienced the first fast food. Our parents saw the birth of TV dinners. One day I visited a friend and saw a hot dog stuck in an electrical box and cooked in a minute. I was impressed. May parents thought it was ridiculous. I mean, how long does it take to cook a hot dog without a microwave, any way, right?!?

The trend of having everything faster has continued.

At my kids’ ages, when I wanted to get in touch with a friend, I had to pick up and dial a corded phone. If my friend was away from home, or even in the backyard, I was out of luck. A letter would take a day to friends who lived in many areas of my state, like most the boys I met at summer camps, and longer if further. Email? Ha! Science fiction. Let alone texting. Kids who meet once can keep in constant contact. They don’t even have to meet in person first. Oh, wait, irl…

Yeah, I already alluded to the fact that I’m a little old.

Although it looks different today, humans have never been good at waiting. Time is one boundary we don’t like to accept.

We want what we want, and we want it whenever we feel like it.

I mean, look at Eve.

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. Genesis 3:6-7, NASB

I remember that impatience for knowledge I couldn’t comprehend, but knew was just out of reach, my impatience to experience adulthood. When you realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, it’s too late, just like it was for Eve and Adam. Once you lose the innocence of childhood, you can’t get it back.

From the beginning we’ve wanted more than is best for us in that moment, the definable or indefinable something more. We endlessly move on to the next thing. We rush into the next moment, rarely stopping to fully realize the beauty in this one.

King David took Uriah’s wife.

Lot’s wife told him to curse God and die, I mean, what did he have to live for, any way? But Lot was determined to accept God’s Sovereignty. And wisdom. But as pain continues, it gets harder to bear. It keeps wearing us down, even after we feel like there is nothing left to wear down. The hard truth we resist along with the pain is that when we seek God there, we find Him in ways we couldn’t experience Him outside of it.

Peter didn’t seek God’s strength to remain faithful to Jesus when the ugliness He told His disciples was coming came, but trusted in His own impetuous human devotion.

My downfall tends to be wanting to feel better, to feel alive, to feel fulfilled NOW. To be able to see, hear, touch, experience that which makes me feel good in the moment. The temptation to disregard potential consequences and take what I want always crops back up.

And here’s some of that unflattering honesty I throw out there relatively regularly… That’s where I am today. I don’t particularly care about keeping up my blog. My time in the Word is obligatory and empty. I rarely pray. My life is taking a new shape and I’m not being sufficiently careful about what I let in, while letting healthy spiritual habits drop by the wayside.

When it comes to patience? Not doing so well. Either in trusting God’s wisdom, grace, and timing, or with my loved ones.

Life doesn’t look like I thought it would. I’m restless. And tired of waiting for change.

So… patience. The next Fruit of the Spirit we’re looking at in Listen When He Speaks. Timely for me. How about you?