The Heart and Patience
Practicing Awareness of Our Impatience
Reflection By Scott Stoner
Inside all of our impatience is God’s invitation to trust and to grow in all our circumstances.
- Lisa Senuta
Each of the four weeks of Advent will focus on a theme related to the overall theme of practicing patience with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. This first week of Advent we will focus on becoming more aware of our impatience. This may seem like an odd place to start, but we think it is always wise to begin with honest self-assessment. It’s hard to change or grow if we don’t first acknowledge where we are. If, for example, I want to begin to manage my finances more wisely, a crucial first step would be to begin by reflecting honestly on my current spending, saving, and sharing habits.
Following this line of thinking, this week we will invite you to simply observe and become more curious about how and when impatience shows up in your life. When are you impatient with yourself? When are you impatient with others? When are you impatient with God? How does this get expressed? When do you have trouble delaying gratification or waiting?
Self-reflection can be humbling, and so we want to be sure that we are doing it with love, gentleness, and patience, toward ourselves and others. May we be blessed on our journey.
Making It Personal: On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is wanting instant gratification all the time, and 10 is being completely patient at all times, how patient are you? On that same scale, where would you like to be? What are your initial ideas about practices, habits, or disciplines that could help you make the changes you desire?
TO JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP FOR ADVENT, CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW:
Follow along with us this Advent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Carolyn Karl, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.
In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.