About midday on the last Saturday of September this year, I went to my barber to have a haircut. He was already working on me when a young man walked in and sat down to take his turn. While he was rounding off with me, another middle-aged man walked in. He walked away because of that one customer who would be attended to before him. He couldn’t exercise patience for about 15 minutes to take his turn. I began to wonder what the issue is with human beings as far as patience is concerned. We find it inconveniencing to wait for anything. Yet, even in spiritual parlance, patience is hitched to faith. Faith is a powerful force, but it does not always deliver result at the snap of a finger; in most cases, we have to exercise patient waiting.

“Ability to wait and not give up is like telling God that we have no alternative to Him.”

There is usually an intervening period from when we begin to express faith to when we see the dividends of faith. The name of the game, at such time, is patience. Patience is an expression of faith. Ability to wait and not give up is like telling God that we have no alternative to Him. That ability to keep waiting patiently is what qualified the man by the pool of Bethesda as a man of faith. Others beat him to the pool several times but he never gave up on the source of his miracle. He always believed that there was something called another time. He kept at it until the One with whom nothing is impossible showed up. Choosing to endure to the end is what leads to eventual blessing.