Impatience is a Character Flaw

When I get home from work each day, Laura and I will often catch up on how our days went. We recount what we did, with whom we spent time, and the list of things we didn’t get done. Sometimes Laura’s response is, “Well, I know I kept busy, but I don’t recall all the details of how I spent my time.” I, on the other hand, am far too descriptive of a detailed, hourly summary of the contents of my day. 

Hence, one more example of how marriage can often create balance with the shadow-side of life.

Laura’s “growth area” may be a little more structure in her day. (Although, since I know she will read this, I emphasize that this may be a growth area.) However, one of my many “growth areas” is not creating a false identity of self-worth based on my habitual “efficiency” of time.

In Gulliver’s Travels, one of the scenes reveals the Lilliputians thinking that Gulliver’s god must be his clock, because he kept checking it. This was Jonathan Swift’s creative commentary on his era’s worship of time, hurry, and efficiency, which applies directly to our era as well. 

Through the years, I have become quite good at developing the character of impatience. Whether I’m driving, meeting with people, working on a sermon, or writing a blog, I have successfully crafted the art of trying to squeeze more into my limited time, of speeding through my current agenda item in order to move on to the next.

In all honesty, this is not to be celebrated but recalibrated. Impatience is a character flaw and a deficiency that overrides any true semblance of efficiency. I may be efficient at accomplishing a task, but that bears little significance if it is deficient in the way of Jesus.

Theologian Hans Urs von Bathasar describes the central role of patience in the Christian life:

Patience [is] the basic constituent of Christianity . . . the power to wait, to persevere, to hold out, to endure to the end, not to transcend one’s own limitations, not to force issues by playing the hero or the titan, but to practice the virtue that lies beyond heroism, the meekness of the lamb which is led (A Theology of History, 37).

We are to manage our time well, but we cannot control it. In our attempt to control time, we, in fact, become controlled by it. We are lambs to be led through the passing of time where we trust, we wait, and we practice the hard work of patience.

Trish Warren writes that “time is a gift from God, a means of worship” not that which is to be worshiped (Liturgy of the Ordinary, 108). 

The next time you are impatient, settle your soul, accept your limitations, and rest in the One who has “a plan for the fullness of time” (Ephesians 1:10) and who has “marked out [our] appointed times in history” (Acts 17:26). Let’s patiently worship the Giver of time and not time itself.