When do we grow tired of Waiting?

Impatience can be a torment on our nerves. Any more the lines of waiting for our turn have become moments of “hurry up, " or why did I choose this lane to the bank, grocery store, or the confessional? Yes, even if I choose to go to confession the lines of years past have diminished, but in this world of get in and get out as quickly as I can present a ticket to ulcers or anxiety that psychologists are plentiful for tired minds.

If one has the opportunity to live with or be close to another who practices moments of impatience, then you will see just how much anxiety an impatient person can develop in a short period of time. However, there are other ways that impatience can affect many people without standing in lines for service or expected results of an effort of communication. These moments can pose a future excursion that oftentimes alludes to us since the outcome might pass us by. Such a premise of this is addressed by St. Peter: Know this first of all, that in the last days scoffers will come to scoff, living according to their own desires and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? From the time when our ancestors fell asleep, everything has remained as it was from the beginning of creation.” They deliberately ignore the fact that the heavens existed of old and earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God; through these the world that then existed was destroyed, deluged with water. The present heavens and earth have been reserved by the same word for fire, kept for the day of judgment and of destruction of the godless. But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard delay, but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out. (2 Pt 3: 3 - 10). Of course, this example by Peter can be found in the Book of Revelation, which was written much later than in Peter’s time before he wrote this.

This script by St. Peter is synonymous with the very manner people have been living almost 2,000 years after the teaching of Jesus and the same exhortation that Peter wrote about. Today, too many people do not believe the words of modern prophecy regarding the period of history that awaits us and God’s final judgment on man’s ultimate rejection of all he created and man destroyed the very world God freely gave him. This patience or disbelief of it is on its way and it may be here sooner than any of us expect.

What Peter wrote about was 2,000 years before our encounter from the Books o fDaniel and Revelation predicting the ultimate accounting that is soon upon us in 2025.

Has our patience also run dry by not believing the predictions that are coming true, maybe in our present time of history? For the impatient perhaps the awaited opening of a mystery known only to God, the Father, will suddenly become a reality and their asking when? “will be now.”

Ralph B. Hathaway