What is patience?

Patience is a divine virtue. Unfortunately, not only are we badly wanting in this divine virtue, but also we neglect it most foolishly.

What is patience? It is an inner assurance of God's unreserved love and unconditional guidance. Patience is God's power hidden in us to weather the teeming storms of life.
Time is a flying bird. Do you want to capture the bird and encage it? Then you need patience. Your fondest dreams will be transformed into fruitful realities if you just know the secret of growing the patience-tree in your heart.
Patience is your sincere surrender to God's Will. This surrender is by no means the effacement of the finite self which you now are, but the total transformation of your finite existence into the infinite Self.

Patience can never be imposed on you from outside. It is your own inner wealth, wisdom, peace and victory.
Patience will never tell us that something is a hopeless task. Patience will only tell us either that we are not ready or that the time is not ripe. We may have the feeling that we are ready, but we have to know that our integral being, our whole being, is not ready.

We have to feel that patience is not something passive. On the contrary, it is something dynamic. In patience we develop our inner strength, our inner will power. It is true that if we have will power we can easily acquire patience. But it is equally true that when we have patience, our inner will power develops itself in a special way.