Learning patience...

"Your kingdom come..."
​~ Matthew 6:10a

"Patience for me is learning how to live within God's timing."

I just looked at the woman I was visiting and realized that this was the best description for patience that I had ever heard. "I've had a lot of time to think about this."

​The woman has lived the last three years in bed due to a stroke that changed her life completely, and now she was dying. "Now I'm just patiently waiting for God to call me home."

When we find ourselves seeking to be more aware of God's timing, or at least the ability to be comfortable in that timing, we suddenly realize the importance of patience.

For many, patience is a discipline that is difficult to master.

It is not the waiting until something happens over which we have no control; the setting of the sun, an end to a conflict, or the waves finding their way to the shore.

Patience is also not about waiting on someone else to make the first move.

I have discovered that patience is being involved in every moment of our life. To not wait. To be not just aware of the here and now, but to be present in every breath that we take, and to be available in those moments.

Impatience, for me, is when I can't seem to live in that moment, and that by some miracle, behave as if life will simply be lived tomorrow, later, or in some other place.

Being patient is trusting that what we seek is already present, and that either we must pray to have our eyes open, or God is simply waiting for us to realize the blessing.

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2019


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