"We were created as beings intended to inhabit time well. We are so eager to defend the fact of Creation to skeptics and atheists that we often forget the instructive quality of the rhythm of Creation. God who is beyond time somehow takes time to create all things. And then a day of rest is established. Christian faith is thus not simply historical; it is also concerned with honoring the meaning of our temporality. Impatience is a deeply disordering vice, displaying at root a frustration with a God who uses time to accomplish his purposes, who has chosen not to do everything right away.
While there is nothing new about impatience, I think it's fair to say that no human culture has so institutionalized restlessness and a quest for immediacy as has our own. We expect that people will respond to our demands without delay and that circumstances will be altered (whether a website loading or traffic abating or a meal being prepared) in the blink of an eye.
More significantly, we expect to be able to adjust our own feelings quickly, to move emotionally from "zero to 60" in three seconds. The idea that any joys - whether sublime or mundane - might require disciplines of cultivation is increasingly foreign to our accelerated culture."
--Ken Myers, "Emotion Sickness," Touchstone (Nov/Dec 2009)
