The God Slot: Patience and prayer

By Fr Declan Boland

There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos. At least, so it seems, no clocks are placed where gamblers might see them; the reason being that ‘watching the clock’ hampers the skill of a good gambler. Since waiting is essential to winning, patience is the great virtue of gamblers… and of those who like to fish.

Patience is a necessary daily ingredient for life as well as for prayer. ‘She has the patience of a saint’ is a common expression that reveals that the possession of this virtue is one of the ‘signs’ of holiness. Patience is the ability to ‘suffer time’. The word comes from a Greek mother word meaning which means to suffer. Patience is one test of the degree of a person’s inner (or spiritual) balance.

In each of our lives we have need of this ability to wait. We seem to want everything RIGHT NOW. What is it that we want RIGHT NOW? We want things like love, success, happiness, social justice, equality, peace of mind, beauty and perfect weight (!), quiet neighbours next door, kids that do not mess up, everything arriving on time, perfect road manners from drivers when we are out and about, expecting everyone to be as punctual as ourselves, a priest or minister who does not bore us (!), and at least another thousands thing RIGHT NOW.

We want the Kingdom of God RIGHT NOW. We read in the Gospels that ‘the Kingdom is at hand’. And yet we see little evidence of its presence in our world. We suffer the slowness of the conversion of the human heart. All around us we see war, greed, disregard for persons, oppression of the poor and countless other evils. We hate to wait on God. The promise given to our great spiritual grandfather Abraham, demanded waiting not just for a few years but for thousands of years. Scripture and even fairy tales are full of instructions on the art of waiting.

The very act of waiting, the peaceful suffering of time, is prayer. Part of the discipline of prayer is that of patience. We must learn to suffer the slow growth of inner stillness by daily sitting still. We must suffer the slow conversion of the heart. We must patiently return, day after day, week after week, to the discipline of daily prayer without the reward of seeing instant results of that time spent in prayer. The lack of patience is one of the reasons why prayer is abandoned by a lot of people… they are unable to wait long enough to experience the fruits of their time in silence. Without patience there can be no real prayer! Prayer is patient waiting.

Psalm 36 speaks of this last need, the need to wait on God, “Be still before the Lord and wait in patience.” We must learn how to sit still, to stop being in a hurry, and wait for God to move within our lives. We still ourselves in prayer, aware that the graces we need, the special gifts we desire, will come to us when we are ready. Whatever is necessary for our spiritual journey will come when the time is ready. Until that time we simply sit in stillness, waiting… “It is good to wait in patience for the Lord to save.”

Having to wait on others, even having to wait on God is not fun. That’s because we are in a hurry; to wait is to have our plans upset. But if God is life and the purpose of life is to find pleasure in God why can’t we be at peace in waiting? Try it the next time you are called upon to wait for someone or something. Note your habitual ways of reacting coming to the surface. Then open up to the gift of time and realise that you can be at peace in that space without frustration or anger.

In marriage, art, work, sports and prayer we must learn how to suffer the time of growth. Patience is certainly not putting off until tomorrow what we should be doing today. Rather it is vigilant waiting, a waiting that is full, pregnant with dreams, hopes and idea. Patience is not resignation. It is loving and dynamic surrender. The kingdom of God comes slowly. We must learn to carry our dreams in our hearts, feed them with prayer each day as, with the power of God’s grace, we transform the ordinary and repetitious events of our daily lives into something beautiful for God.

In God’s eternal world, as in Caesar’s Palace in Vegas… that’s right, there are no clocks!