Often, we get impatient.
The smallest things trigger us, and we complain, “This is taking forever.”
When our computers take a few seconds to start up, our online purchase takes a while longer to process, or when we are waiting in the lunch queue for our chicken rice, we cluck our tongues and keep checking our watches (or phones) and groan inwardly.
For those who drive, we can identify with this when we are stuck in a traffic jam. Some drivers can’t help but drift from lane to lane, hoping the other lane would prove to move faster. We tap on our steering wheel and keep checking for updates on the traffic situation.
Waiting is hard. But perhaps our response to waiting indicates something deeper in our hearts.
As Tish Harrison Warren puts it in Liturgy of the Ordinary (2016), “Christians are people who wait. We live in liminal time, in the already and not yet.” Christ has come and he has redeemed us, but we are on the journey of awaiting his return in glory.
In church, we declare that Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. This is the hope that we hold on to and for good reason. But the question is, are we living our lives with that same hope, that same disposition of patience knowing that time is in God’s hands in our everyday lives?
Christians are people who wait. We live in liminal time, in the already and not yet.
For Christians, we ought to live differently.
I like how Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it across in A Theology of History (1963). He talks about the significance that patience has on our lives as Christians. He suggests that in God’s time, he has planned for humans to enjoy all the good that he has given. Therefore, “all disobedience, all sin, consists essentially in breaking out of time” and the coming of Christ made ready a “repentant return from a false, swift transfer of eternity to a true, slow confinement in time”.
This essentially is where patience in the present is training us as people who live differently and have a clear hope for eternity. Being patient in a culture that demands efficiency (sometimes at unreasonable expense) over building of relationships and inclines to instant gratification is not easy, but it is needed.
Patience is part of the fruit of the Spirit that we need to build into our spiritual disciplines.
For those who have the privilege of being with little children, watching them put on their shoes while running late can attest to how much patience is required. It is in these daily moments where choosing patience over irritation matters. We do good to remember that.
Patience is part of the fruit of the Spirit that we need to
build into our spiritual disciplines.
When we are made to wait — whether in traffic, on a train disruption, or even for our family members who might be slower than us — we are learning and embodying the truth of “already and not yet”, and our response speaks volumes.
In our hectic Singaporean culture, let us as believers choose differently.
Learn to wait graciously and with an unhurried-ness we see missing around us.
For if time is in God’s hands, and we are living in his ways, we can live to a different rhythm and remember that we are loved and valued beyond the time-ticking demands of our days.
