No matter what you do, all you can do is be patient. Sometime we forget that the world don’t operate & cater to our time & schedules.

Things don’t always get done when we need them on time. I have even found that God works on his own schedule. We sometimes become demanding & demand things from Him (who is anyone to demand something from God?) We find ourselves getting impatient with him, wondering if He is gonna answer our requests/prayers or not & sometimes getting frustrated because of that. Am I right?

As hard as it might be to admit–things don’t work that way. I mean yes, there is times when God does give people what they want, when they want at the exact moment, other times he doesn’t, but he will respond later. We must remember that God created time, he is not confined & constrained by time, we fall short in our wisdom & understanding, & God don’t. He knows everything & has all wisdom, so when de decides to delay responding, there obviously is a greater reason & purpose that maybe we fall short in understanding. Maybe if we take the time, we can begin to understand why the response was delayed. As a muslim, I believe that maybe God taking his time could be a test for us to say how we would react. A lot of people would like to believe that they are patient & tell others that they are patient, but the true test is when we are tested with our patience. There is times when we had to wait for a response from God & it turns out he gave us what we wanted & 10 more, or we didn’t get what we wanted, but what he gave us was 10 better!!! Have you ever experienced that???

I learned that another part of being patient, is when you have the upper hand & control of a situation & you have the abilty to be merficul & grant another person/other persons with patience when they need it. You might be an employer who extends a deadline because of whatever reason for your employee…You might be a parent who exercised patience with your child….ect…

Another example, sometimes we have to exercise patience when people we know are “going through some thangs”…We all know sometimes people can get really mean & short tempered when affected by a bad situation, & it can be easy to react to that & say & do things that we don’t necessarily mean or come to regret later. We should always take other people’s circumstance into consideration, & give them the benefit of the doubt, meaning we use self restraint when dealing with that person because we know they are “going through some thangs” so when they are being mean or whatever, we respond with kindness, lend a helping had, give them space, & go out of the way to show them love. Small acts like those could be the difference, and might change things for the other person.

In prison, people get patience confused with being able to temporarily hold of desiring the bad illegal things of life. Patience is not keeping yourself from drugs because you are locked up, but when you know you are free, you gonna go get high & or drunk. Patience is enduring the cravings to get high/drunk eradicating yourself of the desires & bearing with constancy the trouble of overcoming addiction. Same with material things, or wanting to fight. Patience is not fighting because you are in prison, or not stealing because you are in prison, patience is holding back from fighting because you know it’s wrong & you don’t want to be invovled in that no more, so when you are mad, & want to fight you resist the urge for a better cause.

It is a struggle to overcome what we knew out there on the streets, to pull yourself away from the friends, the family, the lifestyle, the fornication, the money, the material possessions. They are so enticing & alluring.

So if overcoming these “demons” doesn’t requure the utmost patience, then I don’t know what does!!!!

http://www.jonathankeenangordon.name/jongordon

Jonathan Gordon
DOC #793350