Learning Patience

As many of you will know, this resource is designed to strengthen the good habits of the Christian life. For each month, it briefly summarises a couple of the classic spiritual disciplines, setting these alongside key Bible passages and some simple exercises to try. Here, you’ll find republished the introduction and praxis exercises on patience. 

As you read on, there are a couple of things to remember. The first is that we wrote The Hare and the Tortoise back in 2011. Over the past decade, our cultural impatience seems only to have amplified even more. And then, while some of our examples of ways to learn patience are timeless (like eating and scripture memorisation), suggesting that you “choose the longest supermarket checkout line” might seem almost quaint these days. But, we trust you can get the point and translate as present conditions require. However much impatience becomes woven into the social fabric (embedded, for instance, as a design principle in the supermarket checkout!), occasions to learn and practice patience abound. The second thing to remember is this: even if we did catalogue the latest ways human beings have perfected the impatient life, these may not be the particular things that the Lord wants to bring to your attention as you seek to grow from impatience to patience. So, be prayerful and open as you read on. Read slowly: let your mind and heart reflect on the shape and the pace of your own life. Ask God to highlight the specific irritations and distractions for you in this area. And pray for help as you consider how you might address these and lean in to the grace of patient waiting—Sam.

The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a landmark study into human behavioural psychology. Children were each given a marshmallow and told that if they could wait without eating it for fifteen minutes, they would be given a second marshmallow. More than 600 children were tested but fewer than 200 were able to resist the temptation.

That experiment sums up our society pretty well. We live in a culture of the “easy” and the “now.” We have fast food—even instant meals. We can travel to the far side of the world in a matter of hours, communicate instantly and anywhere, and buy a staggering array of stuff any time of the day. We can even pay for all of this on credit if we really must have it now. So, when the delays and inconveniences of life inevitably come our way, our response can sometimes be a little out of proportion. Being stuck in traffic, stuck on hold, stuck in a queue while someone else moves a little slower than we would like—these all generate impatience that quickly grows into frustration, intolerance, and ungratefulness … even anger. The antidote to all this is obvious if not easy to practice: patience.

The biblical writers often encourage us to practice patience. They understand that much of life is spent waiting: for others, for a situation to change, for something greatly anticipated, for food to cook, or for rain to come. For Christians, our sense of waiting goes even deeper. We wait for God to act and for Christ to return. Given all this, it is easy to see why Paul in his letter to the Galatians identifies patience as a fruit of the Spirit.

The Hare and the Tortoise readings for this month focus on the life of Christ—a life in which, it’s fair to say, there was a lot more at stake than marshmallows. Not only was his life marked by patience, it was marked by the broader discipline of submission. He was able to wait for the timing of the Father patiently because he was submitted to the Father in all things and trusted him to act with love, goodness, wisdom, and perfect timing.

Patience is an important discipline because it strikes right at the heart of the human problem: our quest to deny that God is God and that we are creatures. Rowan Williams has put it this way: “Discipleship in the body of Christ is in one sense a matter of constantly battling to be a creature, battling against all those instincts in us which make us want to be God or make us want to be what we think God is.” And this means we need to learn to wait. We need to learn the freedom of a heart willingly submitted to God. We need to learn to leave our marshmallows on the table. God, the world, other people, and even ourselves respond in time.

Patience involves learning to order our lives, habits, and expectations well in a universe where time is a dimension as well as a space. We have included a few simple suggestions below to help you try to slow down. As with all practices, they are embodied but rather unspectacular! The church has known for millennia that small, bodily commitments can change our hearts in deep and lasting ways. As you experiment with them and as other simple actions come to mind, you’ll begin to view people and places differently:

• When you sit down to eat—eat slowly. Don’t rush or try to get through the meal. Think about the food, engage in conversation, and enjoy the moment. If you often eat breakfast on the fly or lunch at your work desk, try to change that pattern.
• When you need to get somewhere local—leave the car at home and walk. Walking will change the way you see your neighbourhood. It will create time for reflection and conversation.
• When you buy something at a shop or supermarket—take your time. Choose the checkout rather than the self-service option. If you’re really radical, choose the checkout with the longest line! Don’t try to make the transaction as quick and efficient as possible—intentionally engage with the person serving you.
• Commit to memorising a chunk of Scripture—perhaps a Psalm, or a favourite chapter of the New Testament. This kind of engagement with the Bible is not easy, nor does it give instant results, but it’s very worthwhile. Next time you’re stuck in a waiting room or a café, instead of playing with your phone, begin to recite it from memory, mulling it over and meditating on the text.

(Image by Joanna Kosinska, CC Zero)