The Meaning of Patience

What is the meaning of patience? What does it mean to wait in the spirit of long-suffering for what you truly desire? There will definitely be challenges along the way – you can be sure of that. There will be many devils to try and stop you. These devils will show themselves not only as situations and circumstances, but also as people. They will hound you and make sure that life as you know it is unbearable. You have to avoid the devils in your life as much as possible.

What is the meaning of patience? What does it mean to seek earnestly for a solution to a problem you have? What does it mean to wake up each morning and think through and through what it is that you’re going to do about such and such a problem, such and such a worry? There is need to stake all your hopes on what it is you long for. You have to want it. You have to need it. You have to be ready to go the extra mile to ensure that you secure it for yourself and your loved ones. You have to keep trying.

There is a sweet way of saying what I’m trying to. It’s called the act or art of putting one foot in front of another. This may simply be called walking. But recall that life is a journey. We walk along journeys, and so the process of living, of getting through life, is walking. And in this walk, this journey of life, what can we do if not put one foot in front of another repeatedly. That’s life; that’s what we signed up for. You and I. Life is about participation. We participate in this journey by making sure we do not overstep our bounds. We must know our limits. And this is where humility comes in.

There is a relationship between humility and patience. If we are in a hurry to get everything right the first time, we probably should be in heaven, and not with the rest of humanity on earth. But we know that we cannot and even should not get everything right the first time. There is always room for improvement. The room for improvement is supplied by our privation of perfection, the perfection that is characteristic of God alone. Do you recall when the rich young man came to Jesus and called him “good master”? Jesus complained. He told the rich young man not to call him good, because no one but God alone is good. This is humility. If goodness is perfection, and perfection is getting everything right the first time, and getting everything right the first time means that we have no privation in us, that we are God, then to allow anyone to call us good is to be proud, and to be impatient.

We can be impatient with our human situation. We can be impatient with the fact that we are not where we think we are supposed to be. We can be impatient with the fact that we do not seem to be keeping up with the Joneses, or simply keeping up appearances successfully. We can be impatient with the fact that things are not going our way or that our dreams are not materializing as fast as we want them to. We want all our wishes and desires to happen yesterday. We want all our passions to be realized today. We want everyone to know us as the coolest and the best at all we do, and when that does not seem to happen quickly enough, then we begin to grow steadily impatient. We begin to throw tantrums.

We are only human, and so we should be patient with ourselves. Human as a word resembles another word, humus, which means soil, and indeed the bible tells us that God made us from the dust, or the slime, of the earth. On Ash Wednesday the priest or minister rubs a bit of ash on our foreheads and reminds us that we are dust and that we shall ultimately return to dust. The priest in so doing wants us to be cognizant of the fact that our humanity is a precarious condition that always should probe the recesses of our soul to ascertain whether or not we are being patient with our failings and our privations, whether we are keeping well our humble place of being human. This is patience. Indeed then, patience is both a spiritual and a cosmic reality. We can be patient about little things like waiting for the bus or the train, or for the washer or the drying machine or the timer on the oven. We can be patient about waiting for test results or anything else that most people have to wait for.

But we also should be patient with the state of our soul. We should realize that we are getting there slowly, with the help of God. We are not God. We were only made to be like him. God our father is the source of perfection, but we are only images of that perfection in a very limited way. And we need to be thankful too, because there comes with gifts and glories the responsibility of acting right in order to keep them and be meritorious of them. We should then be wise not to aspire too high. We should not be too ambitious or too greedy. Recall what the song-writer says in Psalm 131: “O Lord, I am not proud; I do not busy myself with things that are beyond my scope.” This should be our attitude.

One more thing. We have said in a previous post that patience is one of the characteristics of a scientific, or mature mind. This is the sort of mind we want to have. A scientific mind is rational and disposed to good works and right conduct. And it all begins with patience and humility. Let us be patient and humble in all we do. Let us not be in a hurry to acquire all manner of glory and wealth and all what not. Let us rather rest in the loving embrace of the divine and wait for him. God never fails. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). Let us continue to wait.