Have you ever been honked at by a fellow driver and thought, “Wow. Here? Why are you honking here? Are you crazy?”
A week and a half ago, I was in the parking lot of a funeral home, about to go into a wake. The parking lot, filled to capacity, came to an abrupt end behind the building, but I couldn’t see that until I was already halfway down the building’s back alley. There was a car ahead of me, waiting to pull into a spot being vacated by another car backing out on the right. There was just enough room about 30 feet farther up for one car to turn around at a time. It was a situation that required some patience.
I was ready to back up to the broader section of the lot, when another driver came up behind me and honked. I didn’t move, so he pulled to my right, inched between me and the parked cars, pulled ahead of the car in front of me, narrowly missed hitting the car reversing (whose driver slammed on the brakes), and did an aggressive 3-point U-turn in that narrow space to exit the alley. Now really, I thought, was getting into a wake that much of an emergency that it called for such outrageous driving?
Over the last 10 days, I thought several times about what might have possessed this honking driver to act in this way. And as I thought about it, a small, little voice inside began to sing the refrain from a song of my childhood by Agapeland Music:
Have patience. Have patience.
Don’t be in such a hurry.
When you get impatient
You only start to worry.
Remember! Remember!
That God is patient, too,
And think of all the times when others
Had to wait for you.
As you can see, the lyrics are straightforward. They speak right to the heart of Matthew 7:3 -“Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
Only after I found it on YouTube (see link below), did I notice that the song, which is sung by a snail named Herbert, is about being patient in traffic. Now, isn’t that funny? And who do you think might get antsy when the cars pile up at a traffic light, and she’s ready to shove forward with her own schedule?
I might have thought I was being patient because I wasn’t judging the drivers ahead of me in the parking jam that day, but I did get angry and judgmental about the man who drove up behind me. I wasn’t very patient with his impatience. Hmm. I wonder how many times I’ve had to be forgiven for this particular transgression?
