The Vanishing Virtues of Patience and Perseverance

Once in a while, it seems, a typo can be more accurate than the word spelled correctly. Case in point: The sign standing alongside a hospital parking lot read, “Impatient Parking Only.” Apparently, someone was too impatient to proofread the sign! But in reality, most people parking there were probably as much “impatients” as they were in-patients. 

How many times have you arrived at a doctor’s office as a patient and as time ticked away in the waiting room, you turned into an frustrated “impatient”? 

 

More and more, impatience is becoming a dominant factor in many areas of life. A popular adage told us, “A watched pot never boils,” but these days it’s more like, “A watched microwave never beeps.” We used to be willing to wait days for correspondence to arrive via postal mail; now we become anxious when an email doesn’t arrive within a few minutes after it was promised. And when we send a text, we expect an immediate response.

“Impatient parking only.” Maybe we all should post this sign by our driveways, our workplaces – and even our recliners. It’s an appropriate sign of our times. 

 

I’m old enough to remember the days when it took at least a couple of minutes for the TV to “warm up” before we could watch our favorite show. Now we become annoyed if the screen doesn’t illuminate the instant we press the remote. Waiting for the red light to turn to green? Or for the driver in front to start moving once it does? Don’t get me started.

 

Our entire existence is littered with time-saving devices, ones that have succeeded in making us ever-less tolerant of anything that delays our intended objectives. Even larger-scope matters, such as attending college or advancing in a career, are afflicted with IV – the Impatience Virus. 

 

Virtues like perseverance seem old-fashioned. Because it requires patience and determination, a resolve to persist even when obstacles and delays emerge. We want what we want – but we must have it now – not tomorrow! 

 

Those of us who’ve had to grind it out in life, however, understand the two steps forward one step back path that progress often takes. Were it not for applying patience and perseverance to the tasks at hand, we’d still be wallowing in the world of “woulda, shoulda, coulda.” 

 

The apostle Paul certainly recognized that. Writing to his protégé Timothy, he said, “Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance” (2 Timothy 3:10), going on to recount the persecutions and suffering he endured during his ministry. 

 

How could Paul do this? He relied on the power of Christ at work in him – “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13) – and kept his eyes, mind and heart set on the overarching goal of advancing the Gospel.

 

We don’t have to be apostles or “super-Christians,” however, to manifest these traits. We’re repeatedly reminded that patience and perseverance are intrinsic to the victorious life of faith. The book of James opens with the admonition, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing” (James 1:2-4).

 

Like it or not, having our faith tested by challenges and adversity is one of the primary ways it grows strong, one day hopefully resulting in our becoming “mature and complete, lacking nothing.”

 

Writing to believers in Rome, Paul expressed a similar view: “…And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us…” (Romans 5:2-4).

 

I’d hate to admit the many times I’ve grown impatient as I prayed to God, asking Him to do a certain thing in a certain way. But what I perceived as His delay actually proved to be one of His means for developing in me the patience and perseverance I desperately needed – qualities I’d need even more later on. The best way to cultivate patience, I learned, is by having no recourse other than to be patient.

 

In retrospect, I also realized that for the Lord to answer specific prayer requests, often a series of other things had to occur first. Kind of like dominoes toppling in succession, one following the other. What I saw as delay was actually His flawless timing. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11).

 

As Ecclesiastes 3:11 states, “[God] has made everything beautiful in its time,” even if His time is not the same as our time.