This morning our pastor’s message was on patience – and it was a perspective I hadn’t ever thought of till now. The main verse we worked from was “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.” Psalm 40:1-3.

I knew right off the bat that God wanted my full attention this morning. When I was at home getting ready, I had slipped a bookmark in my bible, mindlessly, not really paying attention where it was placed. Hours later when I was sitting in the sanctuary and asked to turn my bible to the focal passage, Psalm 40 was exactly the page when I had placed the marker. I sat up straight because the pastor had my eyes and ears on him.

Now then – back to the message on patience. The pastor spoke about his perspective on what patience meant, what it looked like, what it didn’t look like. I began to see for myself that to have patience, and to pray for patience, wasn’t what I had thought it really was all these years.

I began to wonder if my lack of patience in the past was reflective of a corresponding lack of trust in the Lord. When I was impatient, did that really mean that I didn’t trust the Lord (or have faith) that he will work things out according to His plan and on His timeline? How egotistical of me to think, in my impatience, that I knew better than God, what was to happen in my own life.

For so many years, I wanted things to happen on my schedule, when it was convenient for me. It’s easy to have patience when you insist that things happen the way you want them. It’s much harder to hold on to that patience when you have no idea how things will work out. Patience, in part, has to equal faith and trust in the Lord.