Having life on our own terms is not as simple as the replacement of an old microwave. Rather, the Advent season reminds us that God is the Lord of all time – past, present and future – that ultimately life’s ongoing lesson is that of submitting to God’s timing for everything. The coming of our Savior took centuries to be realized. In yesterday’s second reading from the Letter of St. James we are instructed thus: “Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You too must be patient.” (James 5: 7-8) Patience is not just a lesson for the Advent season. The school of patience has no season, no semester, no graduation.
So, let’s consider the concept of patience for a bit. Patience is required to receive what we desire. It takes time for muffins to bake, for paint to dry, for mail to be delivered, for healing after surgery, for life-changing decisions to be made and patience for just about every transition in life that we make. But why does it seem to take SO MUCH patience for the little things….like the guy in the first car in the left turn lane at the stoplight who doesn’t realize (for 8 seconds) that the light has turned green; or when we discover that the very thing we need from the store has been sold out when we get there; or that the battery we just replaced in the car key fob has already died. I’m sure you have your own list as well.
We grow impatient with those who seem (in our opinion) to lack sensitivity to others. We get frustrated when we can’t finish our list of tasks because something is back ordered or something was damaged in shipping. Nearly every situation of impatience is because we believe it is someone else’s fault. This should cause us to pause and ask why is this bothering me so much? The answer lies in the deadly sin of pride. Pride causes me to believe that EVERYTHING should go the way I want it to go. Pride causes me to believe that I have the best solution for everything. Pride is the inability to let disappointments and unmet expectations evaporate.
Of course, no one likes to be frustrated, disappointed, or made to wait patiently for anything. And if we do, it is often the case that we complain about it and go on and on to others about how awful the whole experience turned out to be. Really? How helpful can it be to reveal our own prideful lack of patience to others, and yet we do it. As a simple spiritual exercise, try monitoring your own habit of complaining, especially in speech. (We complain even more in our thoughts that are left unstated.) When impatience wells up in our thoughts, we ought to ask ourselves why this is so strong? Why is this SO frustrating? Why do I let it get me so worked up? In that moment, there is much to be discovered about ourselves.
Now imagine adopting a kind of method or strategy to engage patience when you would rather get upset. Consider how minor the thing might be that is getting under your skin. Notice how often your impatience is disproportionate to the situation. So, the car wash broke down just before it was my turn to enter in. Disappointing? Yes. A profound injustice? Hardly! It’s a machine! Machines break down! Don’t take it personally! On the bright side, it could have happened while my car was half-way through the car wash. Instead, I might instead shift the focus off of myself and pray for the car wash operator who has a mess on his hands and needs to get someone in to fix it ASAP.
Oddly enough, patience seems harder to come by as people grow older. With age, it just seems harder to “roll with the punches” after a long life of disappointments, frustrations and people who, in our estimation, forget (or never learned) how to think. I’ve been trying to pay closer attention to how little things bother me and how I deal with them. Sometimes how others deal with them catches my attention, as well. The other day I surprised myself in how I responded interiorly to a situation. I was driving behind someone who clearly had enough time to enter a traffic circle but didn’t. Instead of my usual “Come’on, go!” comment, I decided to thank them (inaudibly) for being so cautious. Gratefully, the Lord gave me a new way of seeing the situation.
Either we grow older and lean into what is virtuous or we may well grow older and crankier and more irritable about everything. When St. James wrote, “Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.” he was inviting us to realize some important spiritual lessons about our humanity. The only one who has the right to have life on his own terms is God, himself. Whenever we want life to go our way, we are stepping over that boundary. Patience gets us ready for the ultimate surrender – that of life itself, whenever and however the Lord calls us home. Will that day be a humble surrender for us or a like an adolescent pout, demanding that God explain himself?
As impatience will undoubtedly be our experience multiple times on a daily basis throughout our lives, we can look at those occasions as opportunities to humble ourselves, overcome our pride and accept each and every situation as a training field of virtue, that like Mary, we can say, “Lord, let it be done to me according to thy will.” It takes great patience to inherit the gift of eternal life. Lord, teach us your ways!
