Yesterday! We tend to want things right now or a day earlier - even better. Waiting is not our strongest suit. Patience is not one of our more stellar attributes. But, it should be. We need the blessing of patience in our lives.
Patience is a divine attribute that God calls us to adopt for the blessings it brings: "imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised" (Heb 6:12). Patience or long-suffering develops spiritual muscle and brings us to a level of maturity not otherwise possible. "Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything" (James 1:4).
Understand, however, that patience is not found in the amount of time one waits but rather in the attitude in which one does the waiting. A "Grumpy Gus" having to wait despite the irritation building inside will hardly mature or be blessed in the waiting. It is those people who patiently look forward to God's blessings that receive the benefit.
In Luke 2:22-40, we read about Simeon and a widow named Anna, both of whom had waited patiently for their whole lives for the coming of the Messiah. The baby Jesus was personally presented to both of them with the divine knowledge that he was the Messiah. They both were rewarded with divine blessing that day and could be "dismissed in peace" (pass from this life peacefully).
God wants us to trade in our despair for hope, our impatience for empowerment, our have to have it now for can wait for it when - when it is best and right according to His timing and not ours. When we learn to wait on God's timing, with hopeful expectation, the waiting is a time of growth and enrichment, and the fulfillment is surrounded by divine presence.
Jus' Sayn.
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