“I’m telling you, the Braves should never have let Freddie Freeman go,” the man at the next table said, loud enough that half the coffee shop could hear. “Worst decision they ever made!” His voice carried that edge of certainty—the kind that doesn’t invite disagreement.
Illustration by Jeff Gregory
I was waiting for a friend, nursing a lukewarm cappuccino, when the conversation caught my attention. But what held my interest wasn’t the baseball analysis. It was the other man. His attention never wavered, even as his friend’s opinions grew more emphatic. He didn’t interrupt with his own hot takes or pick up his phone. He just made space for his friend to be heard, however fast and loud the opinions came.
As they stood to leave, the quiet one noticed an acquaintance walking in. He paused, greeted the person, and asked about his daughter’s soccer game from last weekend. The same attentiveness he’d shown his other friend extended effortlessly to this brief encounter—a genuineness that seemed practiced, not manufactured.
I sat there after they’d left, my coffee now cold, and felt convicted. If I’m being honest, I asked myself, how many conversations have I rushed through this week? How many times have I listened just long enough to find an opening for my own thoughts? There was something about the way that man carried himself—patient and unhurried—that made me reconsider what it means to be truly present with others.
We don’t talk much about patience in Western culture. Rather, we celebrate the quick-witted comeback, the commanding presence, the confident assertion. Even in church, we tend to elevate the dynamic speaker, the bold intercessor, the person who radiates confidence in every season. Patience feels passive by comparison. But what I witnessed that morning wasn’t passivity—it was a courageous choice. The listener could have jumped in and dominated that conversation. There was nothing stopping him. Instead, he chose to give his friend something we all desperately need but rarely receive: the gift of being fully heard.
James writes, “Everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger” (James 1:19). The instruction is simple, but anyone who has actually tried knows how demanding it really is. Being quick to hear is more than keeping quiet while someone else talks. It requires setting aside our need to be right, our impulse to correct, and our craving for validation. It means sitting with someone else’s perspective and resisting the urge to critique something when we’re sure the other person has it wrong. That restraint isn’t passivity or weakness. It’s a way of making room for someone else to be more important than ourselves.
Paul describes this way of living when he tells the church at Corinth that love is patient, that it bears and endures all things (1 Cor. 13:4; 1 Cor. 13:7). Patience isn’t a single generous moment. It’s a daily discipline—the kind that grows and matures slowly, the way any spiritual practice does. This means you’ll hold your tongue on Tuesday and fail to do so on Thursday. One day, you’ll listen patiently at breakfast but interrupt someone at lunch. However, over time, if you keep returning to this practice, the reflex begins to change. The space between impulse and response grows wider, and what fills that space starts to look less like willpower and more like love.
But I’m not there yet—not even close. Just the other day, I caught myself finishing my wife’s sentence because I thought I knew where she was headed. Last week, I scrolled through my phone during a call with a friend, telling myself I was listening when I clearly wasn’t. Impatience runs deeper in me than I’d like to admit.
And when I think about the quiet man at the coffee shop, I notice something else: His friend talked to him that way for a reason. People don’t open up to someone who half-listens or steers every conversation back to himself. That kind of trust is built over dozens of unhurried encounters, each one communicating, You matter to me, and I’m not going anywhere. When we practice patience with the people in our life, we create a space they can’t find anywhere else—one where they don’t have to perform or rush or earn our attention. That’s not a small thing. In a world where people are made to feel like interruptions, it may be one of the most generous things we can offer.
I remember how the man’s peaceful attentiveness conveyed warmth and acceptance to those around him. Not through words or advice, but through the simple act of listening. He treated them as if they each mattered—not as a project or a means to an end, but as individuals worth his full attention. And in doing so, whether he intended it or not, he reflected something I recognized as the character of Christ. Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is be present and offer the kind of loving attention that makes another person feel worthy.
