A Prayer for Patience

If only I weren't so damn wise

Dear Spirit of Truth Within Me,*

Please give me patience today, with the world and with myself.

I am so quick to judge, to immediately think that I have fully understood all of the dynamics at play in whatever situation is before me, and that I know exactly how I—and everyone else—should respond to it.

My default perspective is that effectively I am—of all creatures large and small!—you.

I possess the critical knowledge. I grasp what others are clearly failing to.

Oh, but that the people around me were wise enough to heed my wisdom!

Pretty much exactly how you felt as you were dragging that 100-pound beam along the Way of Suffering in Jerusalem after you’d been scourged half to death by whips with leather thongs weighted with metal so they’d rip your flesh down to your bones.

I mean, sure, maybe not just like that. But at my job at Home Depot the other day we did have to figure out how to handle a pretty obnoxious customer who was trying to return stuff he’d so obviously bought at Lowes.

So, you know. Basically the same.

But in truth I really do know one thing, which is that the path to wisdom is long, and winds through a great deal of suffering.

And yes, I have suffered. And insofar as that suffering has distilled down into a compassion that is integral to the person I’ve become, I am wise.

But how quickly does wisdom become arrogance.

And that arrogance become impatience.

So please, God, help me to remember, today and always, that I am you like a drop of water is the ocean.

Help keep me within the truth that there is always more going on than I can possibly comprehend, that whatever is before me is but a single moment in a vast and fluid evolution of moments that I would so, so often be better off simply witnessing than trying to influence.

Help me to remember that if I am impatient—if I’m angry or stressed or feeling overwhelmed—it’s because I am, yet again, listening to myself, instead of to you.

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*The Spirit of Truth, sent by God in my name, lives within you [John: 14:17].

This Comforter—the Holy Spirit within you, whom the Father has sent you in my name—will teach you all things, and bring everything that I have ever told you to your remembrance. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. [John 14:26]