7
Rising above Impatience
My secretary’s husband is a pharmacist. All day long he has the job of carefully measuring and packaging medicines for people. Prescriptions arrive on slips of paper (in doctors’ notorious scrawl) or by telephone, and people want their pills as quickly as possible. Yet he knows that hurry can cause mistakes, which in his line of work could be deadly.
This pharmacist has been in the business long enough to notice a pattern.
“The terminally ill are the most patient,” he says. “If I’m out of a certain medicine, they don’t get upset. They know I’ll get more as soon as I can. If there’s some kind of glitch in our computer system so that they have to wait an extra ten minutes for their medicine, that’s all right. They stay kind.
“In contrast, somebody with a runny nose can be standing there tapping their fingers on the counter like, C’mon, c’mon, whatsa matter with you, anyway? I need my stuff, now!”
I was intrigued with his analysis. It reminded me that the difficulties of life have a way of clarifying what is truly important. In the jungle, I found that my walk with God and my relationship with my family were the big items. Waiting a few extra minutes was certainly not.
That is what the epistle of James is saying when it opens with these words: “The trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1:3-4, KJV). When life spins out of control and we can no longer manage our circumstances, we are forced to become more long-suffering, less demanding, more serene. It is an unfortunate way to have to learn this lesson, but it works.
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Impatience is a way of saying, I’m important. My needs and my schedule ought to take priority here. Whatever is happening in another person’s life doesn’t rank quite as high as mine.
We make such a sweeping conclusion without actually knowing the rest of the facts. We haven’t learned what is causing the delay; we just know we don’t like it and we’re going to exercise our all-American right to crab about it.
I used to be a fairly impatient person. I just called it by other names—say, “efficient” or “productive.” If I walked into McDonald’s at 10:03 a.m., and they hadn’t yet switched over from the breakfast menu to the lunch menu, I would ask for the manager. “Sir, your sign says you change menus at 10 o’clock. So why can’t I get a hamburger and fries? What’s the problem here?”
I’m so ashamed when I think back to those days. I was always pushing people, expecting perfection from everyone.
And then came the jungle year, when food was more hit-and-miss than I had ever imagined. I couldn’t get a hamburger at 10 in the morning, at noon, at 6 in the evening, or any other time. I had to learn a whole new dimension of patience.
People have laughed at my story in the first book about the time I asked God for a hamburger, thinking that would only be possible if he turned us free in the city. Finally, I got my hamburger from Jollibee (the Philippine fast-food chain) one night near Zamboanga—but I still didn’t have my freedom. That is when I realized that God could do anything, even outlandish things. But he wasn’t going to be pressured.
My prayer thereafter began to change. “Lord, whatever you have to teach us in this situation, let us learn it,” I prayed. “You know how badly I want to get out of this predicament. But even more than that, I want what you want. I want the character of spiritual maturity. I want the fruits of the Holy Spirit—one of which is patience (see Galatians 5:22). Work in my heart and life, O Lord.”
* *
During college, my roommate Margie introduced me to the Henry Drummond classic entitled The Greatest Thing in the World. It is a marvelous exposition of 1 Corinthians 13 by a Scotsman who worked with D. L. Moody in the late 1800s. I used to reread that book once a year, until eventually I lost my copy.
After a theoretical treatment of the components of love, Drummond writes:
So much for the analysis of love. Now the business of our lives is to have these things fitted into our characters. That is the supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this world. Is life not full of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground, it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. The one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love.
What makes a person a good cricketer? Practice. What makes a person a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What makes a person a good linguist, a good stenographer? Practice. What makes a person a good person? Practice. Nothing else. . . .
What was Christ doing in the carpenter’s shop? Practicing. Though perfect, we read that He learned obedience, and grew in wisdom and in favor with God. Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live with and work with. Above all, do not resent temptation, and do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases neither through effort, agony, or prayer. That is your practice. That is the practice that God appoints you—and it is having its work in making you patient, humble, generous, unselfish, kind, and courteous.[6]
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By now, you can tell that I am frequently affected by music. Here is another case: We were in church on a Sunday morning singing, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” The opening stanza says something startling: “Nearer, my God, to Thee; nearer to Thee! / E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me.”
The writer, Sarah F. Adams, was proclaiming that she wanted to be lifted up as close to God in heaven as she could get, even if the means of elevation—the hoist, if you will—had to be a cross! If crucifixion was what it took to be nearer to her God, so be it.
I don’t know that I could honestly say that. I don’t like to suffer. I never choose discomfort over comfort.
During our year of captivity, FBI agents interviewed our kids in Kansas. “We can’t imagine how Mom is surviving all this time,” they told the men. “She doesn’t even like to camp!”
Would I choose to deny myself and camp for a year to get closer to God? That’s hardly my style.
But it does bring to mind what Paul wrote in Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ. I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not one of those who treats the grace of God as meaningless” (2:19-21).
This must have been a shocking thought to Paul’s original readers in the Roman Empire, many of whom had watched actual crucifixions. Yes, it had happened to Jesus—a horrific atrocity. But here the apostle was venturing into something else entirely. He said he felt crucified, at least in some metaphorical way. His will, his person, his selfishness had been executed in order that new, divine life and character might replace them.
A page or two later in his epistle, immediately after the fruit-of-the-Spirit listing mentioned earlier, Paul added: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. If we are living now by the Holy Spirit, let us follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives” (5:24-25).
Every part of our lives? Even our schedule? Even our yearning for action, for progress, for achievement, for resolution to our difficulty? Yes. The call to patience is a divine call, a summons to get in rhythm with God’s pace instead of the human way. It is a hard adjustment to make, but it yields many benefits.