If you’re one of the 115 million Americans who heads to work in a vehicle on a daily basis, odds are there are few things that frustrate you more than getting stuck at a red light. According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials, the perfect amount of time for a light to remain red is between 60 and 90 seconds. That means that, ideally, an urban driver would spend an average of 75 seconds waiting at each red light.  

According to AAA, the average American spends 17,600 minutes driving each year. That’s 3,520 minutes, or 58.6 hours, spent waiting at red lights every 365 days.  

But it’s not just waiting in line that challenges our patience, challenging situations and frustrating people, test our patience as well. Sometimes even the best of friends can test each others’ patience.  

Patience can be an Achilles’ heel, depending on how it affects the example we are leaving of our faith and how being a disciple of Jesus plays out in real life in real time.  

And this Sunday, as we conclude our Achilles’ series, we’ll see what James says about helping us with that.