7 June 2012

Patience: The Story So Far

"Lord, give me patience - and now!"

This is, I must admit, something that I really struggle with. I don't know whether this is a side effect of the society that we find ourselves in - perhaps it goes with the fast food and email culture - but it really bugs me that so many people think you can pull the stops out and turn something around in no time at all.

It's funny, but when you do 'go the extra mile' for someone, they seem to think nothing of it.

And yet, when I ask for something to be done quickly, everyone seems to invariably drag their feet.

I've been reviewing the number of times I've blogged on 'patience' and find this in the tenth time I've done so over the last three years. Guess I'm not there yet on this one. Yet.

"God's way of answering the Christian's prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction." - Richard Cecil

"Have patience with all things, But, first of all with yourself." - Saint Francis de Sales

2 comments:

Ian Jones said...

Thanks for your honesty!

I too have a problem with patience especially when people aren't doing what I need them to do. I've also found though that I am just as guilty of putting off doing things for others. Just this week I got annoyed with someone who wasn't being very patient with me over something I'd put off doing until the last minute.

Something someone told me once is that the things that get you annoyed about others is almost always the thing that you are most likely to be guilty of yourself!

Graeme Smith said...

This is where we have to learn to work with other I suppose. When there is a job to be done and it only affects the person who is doing it then putting it off isn't much of a problem and therefore patience isn't a problem.

However, when we are working together on something then we have to consider the other person. For instance, I had an e-mail this week to do with an event in August. They are asking for the information to be sent ahead of time so that they can make sure everything is organised. I'm pretty sure that if I leave it until the last minute I will get people jumping up and down asking me why I'm delaying things. It might look to me as if they are being impatient, but to them it is simply that they have a lot to do themselves to meet their deadline and I'm holding them up!