Patience - Abigail Schmitt

In the last several weeks, I began working at a fast food restaurant behind the drive through window. And, if anyone else has had experience with that, you know that during the busiest hours, the environment can get stressful and you sometimes just want your other crew members to hurry up with that food so you can get it to the customer and go on to the next order already. It was in just such an environment this morning that a man who was waiting on his food saw me through the pick-up window and said to me, “Patience. You just need to slow down.”

“Patience?” I wanted to say. “Patience? How can you say, ‘Patience,’ to me? How can you say that when I’ve already had two impatient customers before you and I know there’s another one in the car just behind you? Patience? Not here. Not now. There’s no time for it.”

A voice calls to me, “‘Martha, Martha,’” but I ignore it.

It was only after he had driven away that I decided that was a rather ugly thought for me to have, criticizing him for his patience. After all, the Bible says in Galatians 5:22–23 that against such things as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control there is no law. So why does the idea of patience grate against me so?

I have never been a patient person. My father used to point out the flowers that he saw and say, “Look, they’re just like you—they’re called impatiens.” And that was me. I was called impatient. I was the hyper one with the short fuse that could hardly wait for a piece of toast to come out of the toaster without getting impatient. I was the one who could not wait for someone else to finish their sentence so that I could chip in with my contribution to a conversation. I was the one who could not listen, for I wanted to speak now.

I write that I was, while knowing that I am.

I am impatient.

“‘Martha, Martha.’”

In one of the first weeks at Legacy, I prayed that God would give me opportunities to practice patience so that I could become more patient, but when those opportunities did actually come—and come they did—I failed miserably. My short fuse blew and every ounce of patience that I thought I had built up suddenly crumbled before my eyes. “Why can’t I just be good at patience already?” I pleaded, as if I did not see the irony of it, “Why can’t I just be good at patience now?”

“‘Martha, Martha.’”

And it is not just in the little things that I am impatient, I know. I have felt no greater joy than being here at Legacy, growing closer to my God every day, but still a tiny voice in the back of my mind cries out at me, asking me what on earth I am doing here in the middle of Ohio, going to Bible school like a religious weirdo. Why am I here? I could be doing anything. I could be doing everything. I could be in graduate school by now. I could have a doctorate in just a few years, so why am I not on my way there already? A better part of me even says forget the doctorate, why am I not evangelizing, converting the masses to Christianity already? Why am I here? I have to go, go, go.

Why am I here?

“‘Martha, Martha.’”

I turn to the Bible for answers, and I am frustrated in the plainness before me. Abraham was one hundred and Sarah was ninety years old when God’s promise to them was finally fulfilled through Isaac. Moses was eighty years old before the exodus of Israel and the subsequent forty-year wandering even began. Paul was trained in all the Jewish laws and was a prominent Jew before he first encountered Jesus. Jesus lived thirty years before he began his ministry. These people lived entire lifetimes before what we know them for today even began. So I am frustrated at the plainness before me because it tells me exactly what I had hoped it would not—be patient. I could live an entire lifetime (or two) before God uses me for my purpose, and all those lifetimes before will seem as nothing when he does. I know not his purpose for me, and yet I know that I should listen for it.

“Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.’” (Luke 10:38–42)

The good portion—to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen.

So why am I here?

To sit at the Lord’s feet,

be patient, 

and listen.