BEING PATIENT

Written by Luz Leigh – July 2007

      The virtue of patience is not a strong point of mine. I sometimes am reminded of the person who prayed for patience, ending his prayer with, “And I want it NOW, Lord.” In our daily Bible reading from the booklet Open Windows published by LifeWay, today we read the verse Hebrews 6:15. “And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.” One must read the preceding and following verses to get the entire picture. This verse refers to how Abraham waited patiently for so many years for God’s promise to be fulfilled….that he would be the father of a great nation. And we know Abraham was one hundred years old while his wife Sarah was ninety when the promised son Isaac was born.

      Do you not think there were days when Abraham must have wondered if the promise were really going to happen? But, he kept the Faith and one day the Lord gave to Sarah and Abraham that child for which they had long dreamed.

      Years of waiting patiently. It is hard for me at times to wait days, even hours, for the Lord to answer my prayers. But in His time he answers. Maybe not in the way I had envisioned, but sometimes in an even better way.

      Through the years I learned a little about patience. We were in the commercial hay baling business for many years. As you may know, in that business you work when you can. You start as early in the morning as possible and some times you are required to remain long after the “normal” working hours are past. Many days I would prepare supper in anticipation of my husband’s and my sons’ return from the hay fields. There were many times when we ate supper closer to bedtime than most folks. As I watched the food sitting on the stove, getting colder by the hour, I learned to just “patiently endure”. My men folks were just as anxious to be sitting at the supper table as I was to have them there. When I would finally hear their trucks pull into the driveway, I could quickly begin to heat the food so they would not have to wait a minute longer.

      And then there were the nights I would sit on a school parking lot waiting for a bus to pull in and deliver one or more of my children from some function. Oh, don’t get me wrong…..I had not sent them off to something. I would have been at their game, concert, etc., but being typical youngsters they chose to ride the bus back home with their friends. 

      Now I wait patiently for a phone call from my children. They will, and do, call so I just endure the wait. I no longer fret about how long it has been since one has called, which is usually less than a day, because I know in due time the phone will ring. My patience is improving.

      Back to Abraham and Sarah. I am so thankful the Lord did not wait until I was ninety years old to send my first child. My patience was tried many times when I was a young mother in my twenties and thirties; I can not imagine what it would have been like to have born a child at Sarah’s age.