Title: Patiently Waiting for Christ's Return 

Subject: Active Patience
Summary: Martin Collins examines the factors causing urgency and impatience demonstrated by people waiting for Christ to return. We desperately need to develop patience: an active, God given restraint and constancy in endurance while facing trials, realizing (exercising faith like a farmer waiting for produce) that God will take care of us. When juxtaposed against the experiences of the early luminaries like Jeremiah or Job, our frustrations and anticipations seem quite insipid and bland in comparison. Exercising impatience may reflect selfishness on our part, not considering God's timetable or larger picture of salvation for mankind. Trials and tests are marvelous developers of patience and godly contentment. Our patient responsibility includes continual watching and praying, guarding against despair, allowing God to infuse us with godly love, seeking godly fellowship, and patiently enduring trials.

Keywords: Anticipation, Calendar controversy, Constancy, Discriminatory practices, Farmer's patience, Former and latter rain, God's timetable, Hippie movement, Miry dungeon, Patience, Positive attitude, Impatience, Jeremiah, Longsuffering, Nero's persecution, Race riots, Roadmap analogy, Scattering, Signs of the times, Urgency