God scatters light across the world to the just and the unjust, he allows the earth to yield fruit to the worthy and unworthy, he bears the sins and wrongdoing of men, he restrains his wrath as evil men go about their life oblivious to God. The most visible sign of God's patience, however, is the Incarnation. For God allowed himself to be conceived in the womb of a woman and waited patiently for the months to pass before the birth of Christ. When God is born as a human being he patiently underwent the various stages of childhood and adolescence leading to maturity. And when Christ reached adulthood he didn't rush to be recognized and even allowed himself to be baptized by his own servant....Impatience becomes the primal sin, and the chief example of impatience is the devil. "Who," says Tertullian, ever committed adultery "without the impatience of lust?"
For Tertullian the singular mark of patience is not endurance or fortitude but hope. To be impatient, says Tertullian, is to live without hope.
-Excerpted from The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Wilken
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