Patience
Psalms 40:1
I hate to admit it, but I waited for years to have a girl fall in love with me. I always had bad experiences with girls. In 5th grade Andrea really acted as if she liked me. We were going on a field trip to Brookfield Zoo near Chicago. She gave off all those 5th grade signals of affection. Of course, receiving those signals loud and clear, I offered Andrea some of my M&M’s.
Upon entering the zoo, we were separated by our teachers into different groups. After our exhausting day at the zoo, we climbed back on the bus for the trip home, but where was Andrea? She was not sitting with me like she had on the trip to the zoo. I confronted Andrea and you know what she told me? She said, “I was just using you for your M&M’s.” My love life didn’t improve for ages.
High school was an absolute disaster. There were a couple girls that liked me, but the like wasn’t mutual. It always hurts when the one you like doesn’t like you back. That was the case in high school. In my high school memory book, I wrote that I’d be alone forever. Poor me.
My love life didn’t improve after high school either, at least for a few years. I was impatient. I wanted everything on my own time schedule. I’m still that way sometimes. Eventually, I met someone. We began going out. She wrote me a note a few days after our first date. She wrote, “I wouldn’t mind marrying you.” That sounds a bit sappy, but she was in love, I guess. Something like that.
The point of this tale is that God has his own time schedule. I wasn’t happy about that. God’s time schedule was fine. That is not what caused so many tears to flow down my cheeks during high school and the few years afterward. It was my insistence that God do things according to my schedule. That can cause a lot of sadness. It still happens in my life today. I want things done my way and I want them done now. That’s not the way God works. I think I’m way too old to just be figuring that out now. I love our Bible verse for today. It’s a verse that I understand better with my mind but don’t often embrace with my heart.
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I’m just not so great at waiting, no matter how much I know that patience is a virtue.
