The Plague of Impatience

How Making Everything Faster and Easier Made You Discontent and Disconnected from God (And How to Stop It)

“Everyone went and got themselves into a big damn hurry. I just can’t keep up.”

That’s a paraphrase of the line spoken by Brooks Hatlen in Shawshank Redemption, after he was released from prison on parole.

The old man had been incarcerated for over 50 years, gotten used to life behind bars, and missed so many changes that happened in the world during Industrialization and the invention of the automobile. Upon finally receiving the freedom he’d so longed for, he found himself inside a new kind of prison.

Reality outside the cell, the library, the prison yard…was so different the old man couldn’t cope. Through the aid of the state, he was hooked up with a job and an apartment. But everything else he had to do on his own.

He had no family, no friends, no connections, no support. And when he tried to make friends in a strange land he didn’t understand, he was left behind. Because everyone else was moving at a much faster pace, at a much higher level, into a vast beyond he couldn’t grasp.

They were trapped in progress to nowhere, leaving him in the dust. All before the era of personal phones, tablets, laptops, and AI.

Before long, the old man was so estranged and without faith that the next scene showed him in a shadowy room climbing a chair, wrapping a noose around his neck, and ending it all, with one short plunge into oblivion. Only the mice and dust mites around to hear the creaky swing of his lifeless body.

Whether it’s the 1920s or now, the plague of impatience has followed us like a monster in the shade. Wherever we go, it stalks, in the shadows. Waiting for the best opportunity to catch us with distractions and promises of “now, now, now.”

But few of us even notice.

We’ve become so entrenched in our devices, our gluttony, our greed…that we never think twice about being enraptured by trivial, short-term items and issues.

Meanwhile, your son is playing with action figures by himself, your daughter is having a tea party with plastic dolls and cotton-stuffed animals, your wife or husband is trying to have a conversation, but you’re too locked into that glassy info screen, with its bright colors, flashy lights, and near infinite knowledge, to pay them any mind.

And perhaps the worst infraction that pitiful monster dared inflict upon us was to steal our attention from the divine…

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“Dance For Me, God”

Avid Bible-readers are familiar with the way God comes to us. There are many modes, ranging from overt, tangible presence (rare) to the still small voice (common). Both are dismissed by skeptics because they dismiss anything that could be supernatural, preferring psychological labels over theological ones.

“You’re just schizophrenic,” they scream. Or “There’s gotta be a natural explanation.”

Their favored lie is to believe if God existed, he would manifest on the spot, do jumping jacks or roll around on a monocycle juggling bowling pins, and/or cater to their every whim. God can’t exist because if he did, he would be our slave or our clown show.

To their chagrin, the skeptics’ perspective says more about the human condition than the existence of God. Humans since the dawn of time have been so filled with hubris they think they are in control. When in reality, they have control over nothing, except their own behavior.

As a matter of fact, as the old man from Shawshank points out, humans are more likely to surrender control to anything than fight for their own control over everything. To commoditize themselves.

The plague of impatience consumes endlessly and demands the world conform to our image instead of us conforming to God’s, and it is never satisfied. Even when we think we’re fighting for control, we’re really just shaking the chains tighter without God.

The skeptics can dismiss God, but they can never replace him with anything meaningful.

A friend of mine put it this way:

“The standard of ‘Must be new’ drives our decision-making to dismiss nearly EVERYTHING. Marketers know this as well as politicians, think tanks, social media etc. ‘Don’t choose boring old Christ and be a has been like your grandparents. Choose Tribe NEW and be hip and cool!’

The brilliance of getting people to chase NEW is you will always have a market and they will always be on that hamster wheel.

Christ’s peace gets us off that hamster wheel and anchors us to His truth. That’s why it’s such a threat.”

Without Christ, you manufacture a prison of your own design. Guaranteed.

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Highway to Hell

Impatient people never sit still. They’re always on the move, always distracted. That was the main critique of the old man.

It wasn’t just that society was too fast. It was that they never slowed down at all.

In their hurry to get nowhere, they missed life entirely. But most importantly, they missed eternity.

Ignoring Solomon’s warnings in Ecclesiastes that the human life on this earth is the blink of an eye and to fear and obey God are the only things worthwhile, they embraced their new technology and illusion of self-sufficiency without remorse. Allowed it to slowly kill their souls.

Sound familiar?

Your inbox is likely flooded with advertisements right now, and when you aren’t bombarded with commercials for fancy and shiny products promising to scratch that itch, you can bet there’ll be a billboard somewhere along your evening drive ready to catch your wandering eye.

“It’s Thanksgiving. Get your early Black Friday deals!”

Everywhere you go someone tries to sell you “happiness.” And they’re counting on you being confused by all the noise that you never put your guard up. Never question the status quo.

Here are your gods. Just keep moving, just keep buying. Don’t think.

The lap of luxury is a pit to mental and everlasting slavery, but we are too quick to notice the grains shifting underneath the house we’ve built on the sand. We’re blind to the problem and the solution, sacrificing Christ’s peace for the delusion of prosperity in this world.

The old man, to his credit, could see clearly the problem because he hadn’t been perverted yet. There was no log in his eye to yank free. But he was blind to the answer.

Abandoned in misery, he misused solitude. Sure, he had no friends on the outside, but the silence of solitude offered him an opportunity to listen and think, a chance to connect to the divine.

Instead of seeking a church, reading a Bible, or continuing to search for truth, the old man found it best just to die, not realizing he was subjecting himself to a much worse fate. He took the quick way just as much as hurriers he detested.

The quickness that most assuredly leads to death.

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Becoming Timeless

God isn’t the God of “now, now, now,” or “me, me, me.” And he’s certainly no entertainer. He’s the only one with absolute control, capable of stopping the hamster wheel.

He wants to keep you from doing tricks for the world so you can rule alongside him. We were made to subdue the creation and keep creating by his side. But we forsook that responsibility in the pursuit of more, led by prideful impatience, and became depraved, broken sinners.

Whenever God appears tangibly throughout history, it has been to both conquer his enemies and whip into shape those called according to his purpose. Those allegiant to him. Because he wants to permanently shatter our chains.

And it isn’t a pleasant experience.

Fire, lightning, thunder, earthquakes, pestilence, calamities: These are just a few of words to describe his presence and what follows when he moves against the wicked and impatient.

God bows to no man and doesn’t even acknowledge those who refuse to believe he exists (Hebrews 11:6). But…he is near to those who love him, believe in him, trust in him, and follow him.

Even the Israelites (who abandoned God all the time) treasured his still, small voice. Because they knew that’s when God would provide gentle instruction and care.

That’s why patient silence was written into their laws, and the best among them lived it out.

They were no strangers to waiting. God made them wait in Egypt 400 years before he came to rescue them. And then he incorporated waiting and resting into their rhythm of operation: the Sabbath.

It was holy. A day set apart for enjoying the spoils of their labor. For just being. Modeled upon God’s own rest after making the universe and everything in it.

Instead of slaving away meaninglessly as bondservants to temporal agents of this world (Egypt), they could work for themselves and for God and actually live.

In this way, the Israelites would never forget him, as they did in their slavery.

The years waned, they thought he wasn’t coming, they forgot him and each other, so when he did show up, it was memorable. He destroyed the source of their terror with power beyond imagination. They looted the Egyptians. And he kept showing up, as he promised he would.

They gained both spiritual wealth and physical wealth. God reoriented their focus toward the immortal, the heavenly, and material greatness emerged from that proper order. And over millennia, Israel and the church that formed from them after Christ became timeless names in history. The unforgettable kingdom of God.

Prosperity is not a promise. And it certainly isn’t the goal. But where God goes, the rewards are bigger than the risks, and they only come to those who wait.

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A Challenge For You

The moments of waiting are where God shines brightest.

God wants you to thrive. He wants you to become timeless. By clinging to his own timelessness as he is timeless. By conforming to his image. In which you can see and hear him to the fullest.

For Christians, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” isn’t some mere quip. It is everything. The renewal of Sabbath.

In that one line Paul demands that you take Sabbath rest to the next level. Have your mind subdued by God. Make every waking thought bow to him.

Always working and never playing closes you off. If your face is in your phone and your thoughts always seeped into material possessions that break, decay, and crumble or get passed around like hot potatoes after you leave this earth, you too are missing eternity.

Here. Now.

Yes, Christ opened the path to everlasting life, and on the last day, that promise will be fulfilled. But eternity resides among us. In this world.

Beyond the money, fame, and fortune

Beyond the consumerism

Beyond the toys

Like all those pedestrians hurrying to nowhere, you think you want all that and want it now. But you don’t.

Technology is great, but it was never meant replace God.

You want glory. You were made for it.

Patience is a fruit of the Spirit because times of waiting are when the power you crave, God’s power, is given to you as a precious gift. God made patient silence his own. The link between heaven and earth. Where seeking him out in the uncertainty brings courage and victory.

Think of all the times Jesus himself, God-in-the-flesh, went away alone, looking for solitude, to wait and pray. To commune with the Father.

Whether it comes by choice or by force, God resides where time stands still. He doesn’t abide by our ways or our laws or our customs. He transcends them all.

So, seek him there. Put rhythm into how you operate. Balance.

Don’t run from the waiting. Pursue it. Conform to his image instead of trying to get him to conform to yours, and watch everything fall into place.

That way you’ll never end up hopeless in a dark room, with only mice and dust mites to hear you.

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