God is holy, which means that He is “separate”. We could say that “holiness” is a “separate kind of goodness” or “ultra-goodness”. When something “bad” happens, God does not feel threatened like a “good” person would. So, He hovers above the lesser problems of “good” and “evil”, patiently working the course of events according to His infinite wisdom and His higher ways.
God is as patient as He is because He is holy. Albeit, patience is part of the virtue of being holy.
God’s holiness—His “ultra-good, separate” nature—relates to every other attribute of His character. He is Most High because because holy and separate from all other things. Likewise, His wisdom and higher ways are, by definition, separate from our wisdom and ways. The same is true of His omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence.
But, God’s holiness makes it a miracle that God is also “with us” as Emmanuel, Jesus Christ. Without being holy, Jesus could not be the Messiah who saves all people anymore than a sinking vessel could rescue drowning passengers. God must be separate and holy in order to save us and He must be ultra-good and holy to be in a position to bring us to after saving us.
Being holy makes God different from all others.
God commanded Israel to be holy just as He is holy. But, we are anything but holy. We are sinful and disobedient, quite inseparable from our fallen world. In some ways we can separate ourselves from the fallen world around us, but we cannot separate ourselves from the fallen nature of our temporary, physical bodies. So, for the remainder of this lifetime, holiness to us is more of a direction than a virtue we could actually obtain. We need to wake up and walk in the direction of holiness every day and we will never arrive.
This takes patience, which God has plenty of. God watches and still loves us. The fact that He is holy and above our problems allows Him to be patient; all the while our unholiness invites our need for Him to demonstrate His patience toward us. We can only ever be redeemed by a patient and holy God.