Rector’s Blog day 81

Your delivery will be with you between 10.17am and 11.16am.   Your driver will be called Geoff.  The world is not great on patience.  If Geoff arrived at 11.20am, it’s quite possible there would be a complaint in the feedback email which would no doubt be sent.  ‘Were you satisfied with the service you received today?  How could we have improved it?’  One click purchases promising delivery within 24 hours seem to be the new standard.  We all lead such busy lives that there is no time for patience.

Whilst there is part of me that is glad I don’t have to wait in for the phone engineer for a week any more,before he eventually arrives just after I’ve gone out, it seems that an expectation to get things when we want them has two important detrimental results.  The first is that we are sucked just a little it further into the trap of busyness and activity.  ‘I need a slot of one hour when I’m around for the delivery but otherwise I can easily fit in a meeting late morning, without fear of interruption.’

The second is even more insidious.  If we are used to getting what we want, when we want, then it is likely to make us more short-tempered with our friends, family and colleagues who aren’t able to match up to the exacting standards that we expect.  And then the impatience can leak out of things which are merely to do with time keeping and invade everyday relationships and conversation and we can become impatient about people’s views and indeed personalities when they don’t accord with our own.

We may wish God would rush the Kingdom in, and take away the waiting, but his timing is not the same as ours!  And maybe this is the reason.  It just isn’t good for us to get everything we want instantly.  He seems to push it to extremes.  So far we’ve been waiting  2 000 years, and I have a gut feeling we might be waiting another 2 000, unless climate change destroys everything sooner.  Today’s verses from Hebrews seem to unite patience with some of the other Godly values mentioned in the verses, like hope and diligence and to imply that this happens when we connect them with faith in Christ.

And for those of us who cannot understand why so little seems to have changed as a result of the Corona pandemic and we seem to be rushing back to the same lives and values which we had before, this maybe gives a rationale to see it within the patient timing of God.  Spend some time thinking about what makes you impatient, and ask yourself if it is really worth getting worked up about.

A prayer

And here is a song on the same theme.  It is written by Oliver Tangen and Bjarne Johnsen and sung here by Dorothy Cinnamon.

If you would like to join us for Evening Prayer today (Monday) it is at 5.00pm