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Wait

         Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:14)

 

Wait…wait for it… ugh. Why does sixty seconds waiting for the microwave seem like an hour, unless you leave the room to do something, in which case sixty seconds seems like ten. And in spite of evidence that the ability to delay gratification tends to improve one’s likelihood of success, we still can’t seem to tolerate having to wait. I hear of people who complain about having to use a self-check at a grocery store, and while I agree that the stores should have more cashiers, if I have to choose between a self-check that’s open and a cashier with a line, you can bet I’ll choose the former.

It's not that I’m entirely impatient. There are times I am more patient with people (other people tell me) than I should be, and if I have a book to listen to, a craft to do, or research, I can be very patient and focused. There are times when I’ll wait – possibly too long, refusing to take action when I should. But if I don’t have something to do, patience goes out the window.

I suspect impatience, and the performance expectations that fuels it, is one of those snares mentioned yesterday. So it’s not really a surprise that “wait for the Lord” is followed by “be strong and take heart” which is followed by a repetition of “wait for the Lord.” Waiting is hard work. But, it’s actually one of the snares that we can work on more easily than others, because we can set ourselves up to wait, whether on the Lord or on something else – it’s still practice waiting.

Some people have suggested that if we find ourselves being impatient about a stoplight, going around the block and coming back to the light, forcing ourselves to take longer. We can choose to get in a checkout line with a cashier. We can set timers that tell us when we are allowed to do something we want to do. We can practice waiting, and we probably should. 

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