Article May 3, 1947 Issue

The Need of Patient Waiting

ELLA H. HAY

One of the many blessings gained through the study of Christian Science is a higher concept of patient waiting. Patience is often held to be simply an uncomplaining state of resignation maintained until affairs take a turn. With this concept in mind, a man once said: "There is something wrong with patient waiting! I cannot accept as a Christian virtue an attitude of thought which is supine while evil runs riot. Is not alert action better than patient waiting?"

Certainly inertia and inaction are not good: but these undesirable qualities have nothing in common with true patience, which goes hand in hand with alert action. Patience is a positive and not a negative quality; it is akin to calmness, poise, and serenity. Waiting in its true sense means serving. One who waits on table serves guests and patrons. Patient waiting, then, means calmly serving God while the truth, already established in Science, unfolds to view. It is through prayer, consecration, love, and spiritual communion that the fact of God's presence and power is established in consciousness. Patience and constancy in the exercise of these activities are essential to gaining ground in the understanding of God and man's relation to Him.

The omnipotence of Spirit is not evident to the corporeal senses. In order to demonstrate harmony in human experience, therefore, material sense testimony must be denied, reversed, and superseded by the discernment of spiritual facts. A familiar passage from I John (3:2) reads, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." Man's sonship with God is established; but this fact appears to human consciousness only by decrees. As the true nature of God as infinite Mind, Spirit. Soul, Principle appears, we become aware of man's inherent perfection as the child of God and demonstrate health, harmony, and freedom.

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