The necessity of our having this intriguing attribute is cited several times in the scriptures, including by King Benjamin, who clustered the attributes of a saint, and patience was a charter member of that cluster (see Mosiah 3:19; see also Alma 7:23).
Patience is not indifference. Actually, it is caring very much, but being willing, nevertheless, to submit both to the Lord and to what the scriptures call the “process of time.”
Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best—better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than his. Either way we are questioning the reality of God’s omniscience, as if, as some seem to believe, God were on some sort of postdoctoral fellowship.
We read in Mosiah about how the Lord simultaneously tries the patience of his people even as he tries their faith (see Mosiah 23:21). One is not only to endure—but to endure well and gracefully those things which the Lord “seeth fit to inflict upon [us]” (Mosiah 3:19), just as did a group of ancient American Saints who were beating unusual burdens but who submitted “cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord” (Mosiah 24:15).
The Lord has twice said: “And seek the face of the Lord always, that in patience ye may possess your souls, and ye shall have eternal life” (D&C 101:38, italics added; see also Luke 21:19). Could it be that only when our self-control has become total do we come into true possession of our own souls?
