The Left-Turn Arrow at Fifth and Vine
The Left-Turn Arrow at Fifth and Vine
I know that intersection better than my own kitchen. Fifth and Vine, a left-turn arrow that stays green for nine seconds, long enough for four cars if everyone moves the instant it changes and not one second longer. Most mornings I miss it, because the car ahead is checking a phone, not as anxious about nine seconds as I apparently am. When the arrow drops red and I am still three cars back, something tightens in my chest that has no business tightening over a traffic signal, and I have sat there gripping the wheel over a delay costing me two minutes at the absolute most.
I used to think impatience was just my personality, nothing worth examining. Getting sober taught me otherwise. In my drinking years I hated waiting for anything, a drink to kick in, a hangover to pass, a job to call back. I drank partly because it collapsed the distance between wanting something and having it. Eleven years sober, and I still have not lost the instinct that any gap between want and get is an emergency, even when the gap is nine seconds long and the thing I want is simply to turn left.
Solomon noticed the same impulse long before intersections existed to expose it. "The end of a thing is better than its beginning; The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit" (Ecclesiastes 7:8, NKJV). I have always read proud there as arrogance, some grand sin above a man white-knuckling a steering wheel. Sitting at that light yesterday, I recognized the pride for what it actually is in me, a quiet conviction that my two minutes matter more than the pace of a world that does not answer to my schedule. Impatience is pride wearing a stopwatch.
James goes further than I want him to, treating delay not as an obstacle to my growth but as the mechanism of it. "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:2-4, NKJV). I have never counted a red arrow as joy. I have counted it as an interruption to the life I was trying to get to, never as material that life is made of. The waiting is not standing between me and the work God is doing. It is the work.
David wrote from inside a much larger waiting than mine, watching wicked men prosper while he was still hunted, and he did not manage it through gritted teeth. "Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass" (Psalm 37:7, NKJV). Rest comes before the waiting in that sentence, not after it. I have been trying to wait my way into rest, gripping the wheel harder until patience arrives, when David has the order reversed. Jeremiah's scribe wrote something out of the wreckage of a whole city that has become my favorite corrective for a nine-second light. "The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly For the salvation of the LORD" (Lamentations 3:25-26, NKJV). I have never waited quietly at that intersection. I have waited loudly, in my own head, narrating the injustice of a light that will not bend to my timeline. Quiet waiting is aimed, on purpose, at a Person rather than at a clock.
I have tried simply deciding to be more patient, and it lasts about as long as my thumb stays off the horn. Willpower can suppress a reaction for a morning. It cannot rebuild the appetite underneath it, the old hunger to collapse every gap the instant I feel it open. Paul gives the only instruction that has actually started to change anything. "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16, NKJV). My impatience is flesh, plain and simple, an old appetite that never fully retired when the drinking stopped. Walking in the Spirit is not a technique for gritting through nine seconds better. It is attaching my attention to Someone who is never in a hurry, until His pace starts to feel more natural than my own.
Peter writes about a patience that reaches all the way to the return of Christ Himself, and the same logic holds at every smaller scale underneath it. "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9, NKJV). What looks like delay from where I sit looks like mercy from where He sits. He also tells me plainly where to put the urgency I keep misdirecting at red lights. "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time" (1 Peter 5:6, NKJV). Due time, not my time.
I missed the arrow again this morning. I sat there, engine idling, and instead of narrating the injustice of it I said His name once, quietly, and let the two minutes be exactly what they were, nothing more. God is alive tonight, and He already knows which nine seconds you cannot stand losing today. He has a plan for you that was never running behind schedule, and He will never leave you gripping the wheel alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 7:8; James 1:2-4; Psalm 37:7; Lamentations 3:25-26; Galatians 5:16; 2 Peter 3:9; 1 Peter 5:6.
I know that intersection better than my own kitchen. Fifth and Vine, a left-turn arrow that stays green for nine seconds, long enough for four cars if everyone moves the instant it changes and not one second longer. Most mornings I miss it, because the car ahead is checking a phone, not as anxious about nine seconds as I apparently am. When the arrow drops red and I am still three cars back, something tightens in my chest that has no business tightening over a traffic signal, and I have sat there gripping the wheel over a delay costing me two minutes at the absolute most.
I used to think impatience was just my personality, nothing worth examining. Getting sober taught me otherwise. In my drinking years I hated waiting for anything, a drink to kick in, a hangover to pass, a job to call back. I drank partly because it collapsed the distance between wanting something and having it. Eleven years sober, and I still have not lost the instinct that any gap between want and get is an emergency, even when the gap is nine seconds long and the thing I want is simply to turn left.
Solomon noticed the same impulse long before intersections existed to expose it. "The end of a thing is better than its beginning; The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit" (Ecclesiastes 7:8, NKJV). I have always read proud there as arrogance, some grand sin above a man white-knuckling a steering wheel. Sitting at that light yesterday, I recognized the pride for what it actually is in me, a quiet conviction that my two minutes matter more than the pace of a world that does not answer to my schedule. Impatience is pride wearing a stopwatch.
James goes further than I want him to, treating delay not as an obstacle to my growth but as the mechanism of it. "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:2-4, NKJV). I have never counted a red arrow as joy. I have counted it as an interruption to the life I was trying to get to, never as material that life is made of. The waiting is not standing between me and the work God is doing. It is the work.
David wrote from inside a much larger waiting than mine, watching wicked men prosper while he was still hunted, and he did not manage it through gritted teeth. "Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass" (Psalm 37:7, NKJV). Rest comes before the waiting in that sentence, not after it. I have been trying to wait my way into rest, gripping the wheel harder until patience arrives, when David has the order reversed. Jeremiah's scribe wrote something out of the wreckage of a whole city that has become my favorite corrective for a nine-second light. "The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly For the salvation of the LORD" (Lamentations 3:25-26, NKJV). I have never waited quietly at that intersection. I have waited loudly, in my own head, narrating the injustice of a light that will not bend to my timeline. Quiet waiting is aimed, on purpose, at a Person rather than at a clock.
I have tried simply deciding to be more patient, and it lasts about as long as my thumb stays off the horn. Willpower can suppress a reaction for a morning. It cannot rebuild the appetite underneath it, the old hunger to collapse every gap the instant I feel it open. Paul gives the only instruction that has actually started to change anything. "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16, NKJV). My impatience is flesh, plain and simple, an old appetite that never fully retired when the drinking stopped. Walking in the Spirit is not a technique for gritting through nine seconds better. It is attaching my attention to Someone who is never in a hurry, until His pace starts to feel more natural than my own.
Peter writes about a patience that reaches all the way to the return of Christ Himself, and the same logic holds at every smaller scale underneath it. "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9, NKJV). What looks like delay from where I sit looks like mercy from where He sits. He also tells me plainly where to put the urgency I keep misdirecting at red lights. "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time" (1 Peter 5:6, NKJV). Due time, not my time.
I missed the arrow again this morning. I sat there, engine idling, and instead of narrating the injustice of it I said His name once, quietly, and let the two minutes be exactly what they were, nothing more. God is alive tonight, and He already knows which nine seconds you cannot stand losing today. He has a plan for you that was never running behind schedule, and He will never leave you gripping the wheel alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 7:8; James 1:2-4; Psalm 37:7; Lamentations 3:25-26; Galatians 5:16; 2 Peter 3:9; 1 Peter 5:6.
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