Learning patience is one of the hardest things to do and apparently God really wants me to learn patience because He keeps on putting me in situations where I’m waiting for no apparent reason.
So I pull up and there are only two cars in front of me. In McDonald’s terms, that’s probably about one minute. In Wendy’s terms, that’s about ten seconds. In Burger King terms, that’s long enough for one of the employees to be arrested.
So we watch this lady talk at the intercom for over five minutes – literally. It was like she was trying to explain the ending to the TV show Lost. But then she started yelling and pointing at the menu.
Now I don’t know if you know this put pointing at the menu at the drive-thru intercom isn’t going to help.
A couple more minutes later, the lady starts yelling at her passenger. Who was probably telling her to hurry up and get to Burger King or else she’ll be late for her shift.
So seriously, ten minutes later she finally done with her order.
But then, the next person in front of me starts to order… and proceeds to point at the menu. Totally no joke.
She takes 5 minutes. So now I’ve been waiting 15 minutes just to give my order. Which of course takes me under a minute.
Then it takes the people in front of us about 5 minutes to get their orders, so now it’s been 20 minutes.
And guess what?
My order is wrong.
So I have to go inside to get things fixed. But of course there are people in line. So that’s another five minutes.
So a total of 25 minutes after I initially drove up, I’m finally talking to someone who is trying to fix my order.
And this whole time I know that I’m supposed to be patient – and actually doing an okay job at it.
And you know what happened? I started to feel sorry for the people who had to work at this KFC. I thought of all the thankless customers that yell at them for someone else’s fault. The gentleman who was helping me looked dead tired, but he was still polite and doing his best.
He didn’t charge me for the meal, and gave me a free cake.
Normally, I would have been steaming on the inside during this whole thing and I’m glad I wasn’t because I would have felt like a total idiot for getting mad just to have this guy be totally cool with me.
Something that I learned during this is that patience can turn into compassion or showing love.
I had compassion on the guy. I should have also prayed for him, but I just thought of that just now, hopefully I’ll remember to do that next time.
When we aren’t dealing with suppressing some sin, we give ourselves an opportunity to practice other areas of the fruit of the spirit.
And to help us remember what to do, look at this great life changing verse… which I’m pointing to in my Bible right now.
PHP 2:1 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, [2] then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. [3] Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. [4] Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Take Time To Pray: Ask God to help you be patient with people so you have an opportunity to show love.
Today’s Fruit of the Spirit: Love and Patience