I don’t know about you, but I have clear memories of my mother telling me, “Jay, patience is a virtue.” It was perhaps the first thing that I knew to call a “virtue”. It’s also something that I have to tell myself most times when I find myself standing in line for something.

Recently at the Winters house we have been talking about “virtues”, and so we started with “patience”. Psalm 37 tells us “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him.” This is a tough verse for squirmy kids, but it’s also tough for us as adults. We have to remind ourselves many times that “patience is a virtue.”

Interestingly God created us as time-bound creatures. He created time, which means that He created our experience of waiting, which means that He created patience — the virtue necessary to live in a time-bound world. It’s kind of interesting to think that when we get the eternal Resurrection, we may not need patience because time may be different. But on this side of the Resurrection we certainly need it.

We are told in Revelation that even the saints who are in heaven right now are calling out “how long, O Lord?!?” I’m not sure if that means they are being impatient, but they are certainly dealing with our time-bound existence, calling out on our behalf that our wait would end and Christ would come back with the glory of the Resurrection.

Until then, we are called to be patient – as the psalmist says, to be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him. As you work out this virtue in Your life, may it give you the patience to wait until the day that Christ rescues us from a world of sin (and lines….).