Quotes about Patience

Unlike mere action, prayer is not subject to immediate evaluation or verification. If we are addicted to "results" we will quickly lose interest in prayer.

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

I am trying to teach my mind to bear the long, slow growth of the fields, and to sing of its passing while it waits.

There are no shortcuts in growing up. The path to maturity is long and arduous. Hurry is no virtue. There is no secret formula squirreled away that will make it easier or quicker. But stories help.

You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

That's when the phrase (from Nietzsche) "a long obedience in the same direction" embedded itself in my imagination and eventually became this book.

Psalm 120 is the psalm of repentance—the one that gets us out of an environment of deceit and hostility and sets us on our way to God. Psalm 121 is the psalm of trust—a demonstration of how faith resists patent-medicine remedies to trials and tribulations and determinedly trusts God to work out his will and "guard you from every evil" in the midst of difficulty

Genuine apocalyptic that has no parentage in biblical sources or gospel commitments, does promote a progeny of irresponsibility (and the brats are noisily and distressingly in evidence on every American street), but the real thing, the conceived-in-holy-wedlock apocalyptic, develops communities that are passionately patient, courageously committed to witness and work in the kingdom of God no matter how long it takes, or how much it costs.

The transition from a sucking infant to a weaned child, from squalling baby to quiet son or daughter, is not smooth. It is stormy and noisy. It is no easy thing to quiet yourself: sooner may we calm the sea or rule the wind or tame a tiger than quiet ourselves. It is pitched battle. The baby is denied expected comforts and flies into rages or sinks into sulks. There are sobs and struggles. The infant is facing its first great sorrow and it is in sore distress.

Audacious quip of Teresa of Avila when she was energetically engaged in reforming the Carmelite monasteries, traveling all over Spain by oxcart on bad roads. One day she was thrown from her cart into a muddy stream. She shook her fist at God, "God, if this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you don't have many.

"Catacombs Presbyterian Church": "When is this going to happen? How long do we have to wait? When does construction begin? Jesus's response was 'It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.' In other words, it's none of your business. Your question is irrelevant. That kind of information is of no use to you. It would probably confuse you, might discourage you, and would certainly distract you.

Don't curse God; and don't damn your leaders.