Once, during a college summer studying in Latin America, I became so impatient that the buses on the route I needed were packed full that I hopped on a bus heading in the opposite direction. 

It was the right route, and I reasoned that the bus would loop around and that I, with my big brain, would eventually have choice of seats. 

How long could it take? And, anyway, I would get to see a new part of the city. 

As the passengers thinned out, I realized just where my lack of patience had taken me. The bus came to the end of the line in a working-class neighborhood. The driver twisted in his seat, gave me a quizzical look and stepped off to get his supper.

In James 5, the brother of Jesus tells us to “be patient . . . until the coming of the Lord.” This patience has deep roots in the Old Testament. James deploys a word that comes from passages like Exodus 34:6 that proclaim God to be “slow to anger” (literally: “long of nose” — as in: not quick to get red in the face). 

Patience belongs first to God’s char­acter. God is “patient with you” (2 Peter 3:9). It’s connected to mercy. In the Apocrypha, Sirach writes that “the Lord is patient with [human beings] and pours out his mercy upon them” (18:11). 

We emulate God’s patience when we cultivate a gentle and forgiving spirit. “Those with good sense are slow to anger [patient], and it is their glory to overlook an offense” (Proverbs 19:11). “Love is patient,” writes Paul (1 Corinthians 13:4).

Mennonite scholar Alan Kreider wrote that in the early church, patience was considered among the greatest of Christian virtues. In his Patient Ferment of the Early Church, Kreider says the ancient world reckoned patientia to be a virtue for chumps: No plan? No purpose? No power? No problem! Make a virtue of necessity and call it patience. 

Christians, on the other hand, Kreider says, “believed that God is ­patient and that Jesus visibly embodied patience.”

While this Christian patience has a time factor, it takes us beyond mere waiting. The patience James commends four times across two verses is anchored in Christ. It gives us hope for the future and opens the way for perseverance in suffering.

James urges believers to become like the farmer who “waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it” (James 5:7). Such patience is rooted in faith in a very good God. 

Indeed, patience is set alongside faith (1 Timothy 3:10, Hebrews 6:12). We have confidence born of what we’ve seen of God in the past — both the wide past of biblical and church his­tory and our individual walk with God. 

That Hillsong anthem is right about our Lord: “You never failed, and you won’t start now.”

Patience is the biblical response to suffering. James writes that we should look to the prophets of old “as an example of suffering and patience” (5:10). Job is his Exhibit A of patience. When Job lost it all — and even his wife recommended that he “curse God and die” — still Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 2:9, 19:25). 

Patience holds space for God’s grace and goodness to come on God’s timing. 

I’m struck that the Bible doesn’t give us a neat theodicy to explain suffering. It gives us patience.

Without patience grounded in communion with the living Jesus, the wrong-way bus ride in this half-spent night would roll on and on. Life’s “slight momentary affliction” would become just “affliction” (2 Corinthians 4:17). 

Been there. Rode that bus.

With patient hope, we can resist the temptation to surf away our days on distractions. Patience makes it possible to endure hard things — to face them with the hot wind in our face, even to choose the harder path. 

Of all the times I’ve found myself wondering if I might be on the wrong route (and could I go home now?), it was patience that brought me through.

During my wrong-way bus experience, the driver eventually got back on the bus. After making me pay the fare again, we trundled out to the return route. I made it home after dark, my frontal cortex smeared with boredom and with a sigh for the lost time. 

God’s been schooling me in patience. These last few years have been a master class. I think I’ve grown a little. Maybe give it some time and check back later.