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Good morning. Just four days to go and the nation’s children are going crazy. Is Santa delaying his arrival indefinitely? Will Christmas ever come? My heart goes out to exhausted parents trying to contain the exuberance of their offspring. Be patient, many of those parents will doubtless be advising. Because patience, we’re told, is a virtue. I wonder though if that’s actually the case. It may be a helpful adage for settling the children, but is there really all that much virtue in patience? The origin of the word is from the Latin to suffer, and there’s a real danger that casually telling some people to be patient simply provides a narrative for their suffering to endure. How can you be patient if you’re a survivor of Grenfell Tower waiting for answers to basic questions about why your loved ones died? Or if you’re longing for climate justice when the wealthy nations seem to be so slow in taking any real action? Or if you’re in a bunker in Kyiv, desperate for an end to a bloody and unjust war? Simply accepting that kind of suffering indefinitely is not patience. It’s putting up with gross injustice. In instances like that, there’s surely a greater virtue in impatience and in wanting a better world. There are echoes of this in Advent which could be seen as the season of impatience. In these countdown days to Christmas, many Christians sing the wonderful tenth century O antiphons made famous by the carol ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel.’ The one sung today, December 21st, the shortest day of the year, addresses Jesus as, ‘O Radiant Dawn, splendour of eternal light, Sun of justice. Come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.’ There’s no shred of patience at all in this prayer. It makes me think of the night watchman longing with all his heart for the appearance of the daybreak. It conveys a desperate impatience for Christ to come breaking into his world to bring light and life and justice to those whose lives are hard and unfulfilled. Come along Jesus, just hurry up! it says. My heart goes out to parents trying to listen to this whilst hemmed in by children madly waiting for Christmas. I have no advice to offer except the reassurance that there are just a few more days to go. But if you’re longing for justice and for right, maybe there is something to learn from that childish impatience. A desperate, impatient desire for a fairer and better world strikes me as wholly virtuous.