Quit hurrying!

Patience

Galatians 5:23 – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience…”

If there was ever a time of being in a hurry, it’s NOW. No pun intended…But really, we see a lack of patience all over the place. We call some restaurants “Fast Food Restaurants” because we are in a hurry to get to a destination, and the world is coming to an end if it takes 6 minutes in the drive through rather than 5, I mean let’s be serious, don’t these people know that what I have to do and where I’m going is VERY IMPORTANT? Then we get back on the road and we’re stuck behind two slugs having a race on the two-lane street and they are neck and neck, outrageous! The gall of some people going the speed limit on the road, inconceivable! This is just a few examples.
But we see this “hurry” attitude all over the place, and the lack of patience we see is 9 times out of 10 (not statistically proven) connected with somebody else, i.e. the examples I just gave – People at the restaurant not working fast enough, people on the road driving too slow. We get impatient with others and pretty soon we are angry at the other one, bitter, and we start saying things we shouldn’t have said, and where did it come from? In this case, a lack of patience.
Well we know from reading this scripture that one of the fruits of the Spirit is patience, so this obviously needs to be developing in our lives, and we can start right in the car, that is if we have trouble dealing with other people on the road. I can’t pinpoint every area where there is a lack of patience, but these two that I described are areas I dealt with before. When patience is not being developed, stress is either right at the door step or about to walk in. Some terrible things happen when we take on an attitude of “hurry, hurry” or “I can’t take this anymore!”. We may end up doing something drastic that could hurt others and yourself.
How do we develop patience? It’s simple – practice. Making choices that sometimes we don’t feel like making but we know are right. The car example one last time – Someone is going 40 in a 45 and it’s a one lane road, double yellow line, night-time, and you are stuck behind this person. You think “Ok, I’ve had enough, I’m passing this guy”, but what you don’t realize is there is a car coming the other direction and you didn’t see him because his headlights were off, but…It’s too late. You acted in a hurry, there was no patience, and the accident could cost the other person and you your lives. 
This is a serious example, but if patience is not practiced with the little things, it could lead to something like this. But we have the choice, it is a choice, to be patient with others and with things.
There is more on patience, but this is enough for this time. So remember, don’t be in a hurry – be patient!