You’ll never grow in patience apart from prayer. Author Henri Nouwen explains in his excellent book Compassion, that patience is closely connected with prayer. As the Bible says in Romans 12:12, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”
Pray for patience, yes. But far more than that, deepen your prayer life, period. Why?
Because prayer is how you live into the fact that God is the source of your life, the source of your significance. Prayer is how you live into God’s agape love for you, so that all of your heart’s deepest needs get met through your relationship with Jesus Christ.
The more you relate to God through prayer, the more your life starts to orbit around him—he becomes your centre— and the less apt you’ll be to expect that everything and everyone else should orbit around your agenda and expectations, which can be so biased, so curved in on self.
So make space every day for prayer. In the process, pray for others, too—especially those you tend to get impatient with. As German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer explains, to pray for others “is to give them the same right we have received, namely to stand before Christ and share in his mercy.”
Who are the people who are most often the victims of our impatience? Isn’t it the people we live and work closely with?
For many of us, this dynamic is amplified all the more during these days of isolation. If you’re cooped up with others during this historical time, it’s so important to be praying for them. As you do, God will make you more patient with them, and will grow you in love.
