I was rewatching Casino Royale (the best Bond film; no need for further debate) on Amazon Prime the other night. It was during a particularly gripping scene that I was interrupted by an advert for toilet rolls.
The change in tone between Bond frantically chasing an Albanian terrorist and the fluffy Andrex dog was quite jarring, but the thing that struck me was not the loo roll, but rather an icon in the top left corner. BUY IT NOW, the button urged. With just a press of my TV remote, the accommodating folks at Amazon would send me a 32-pack of rolls, the very next day, without me even needing to get the app up on my phone.
How convenient. Or perhaps, how typical of big companies to encourage my natural impatience. The very idea that I’d have to wait to go to the shops seems laughable. Of course I can BUY IT NOW. Why wait?
We live in a world marked by impatience. As I write, Keir Starmer is on the brink of losing his job, less than two years in [editor's note, 22 June 2026: Starmer has announced his resignation as both PM and leader of the Labour Party]. But his tenure seems almost dynastic, compared to other PMs. From the First World War up until Tony Blair at the turn of the century, the average prime minister lasted almost 4.5 years. Since Blair, they’ve averaged just 2.8. Liz Truss was famously outlasted by a lettuce.
And it’s not just in politics, in football too the frequency of firing leaders is accelerating: in October 2021, the average tenure of a Premier League manager was almost 4 years, but now the average stands at just over 2 years.
Maybe the problem is that leaders are less competent than they used to be. Maybe the job of leading a public-facing organisation is simply more difficult. Or maybe we are the problem. Maybe we have become less patient.
This might come across as if the rejection of waiting was entirely bad. But there is a sense in which, as Christians, we should be impatient. We should be eager to see God’s kingdom come on earth. We should earnestly desire it, and pray for it to come sooner (2 Peter 3v12). And we should long for the appearing of Christ (2 Tim. 4v8), in a world marked by sin and pain. “How long, O Lord?” should be our cry! In this world we are pilgrims, journeying towards our true home, and so we should be deeply dissatisfied with our current state. The new creation will be so much better.
Yet, at the same time, we need to be content. God’s timing may frustrate us at times, and we often want Him to move quicker. Yet we can temper our desire to see God work in the world with a spirit of humble acceptance of His sovereignty. He is fulfilling His purposes at His pace. Peter reminds us that “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you.” (2 Peter 3v9) In a world that seems allergic to slow processes, we are reminded that God works patiently, according to His tempo.
So how do we wait on God’s timing, when our world is characterised by impatience? The preacher of Ecclesiastes reminds us that “patience is better than pride” (Eccl. 7v8). Impatience is what happens when we arrogantly think that our plans take precedence over God’s. We start to believe that God ought to be working to our timetable: giving us our promotion at work; changing someone’s mind in order to give us what we want.
Therefore, we breed patience by submitting ourselves to God’s will. We recognise that His plan and His timing will always – always – be better than ours. And so we mix eager expectation with humble contentment. And we patiently wait for Him.
