Moaning about jet-lag from a 17-hour flight back home from South Africa, a friend recently shared highlights of a trip to promote improved mental health care in that great but struggling nation.
“It was a grand experience,” she glowed, “but we were disappointed that some of the planning and coordination of our visits seemed to be haphazard.”
As we talked, it became obvious to me that she had bumped into the cultural barrier most likely to confront travelers in developing countries. People in Africa, for example, simply are not calendar-oriented and clock-driven like we are in America.
Like broken records missionaries recite similar tales of meetings called for 10 a.m. that finally get underway by mid-afternoon. With the locals totally unconcerned about the delay while the transplanted American’s blood pressure soars.
My own missionary brother spent so many years in Malawi that he absorbed their oblivion to clocks. Over there church services started when all the people got there, and the sermon ended when it was over. The longer the better, they thought.
On his first Sunday back home during one furlough, my brother preached in a pulpit where the regular minister kept his sermons under 25 minutes because of popular demand. Imagine the reaction of that American congregation when the sermon that day was still going strong after an hour and a half!
We are clock-conscious as few other societies are. Tony Renteria pointed out to me that only in English does a clock “run.” In Spanish it “walks,” Tony tells me. In French a clock “functions.” In German it “works.” But our clocks run, and so do we to keep up with them.
To those of us who spend our days racing to keep pace with a sweep second hand, the most striking thing about the Gospels’ portrait of Jesus may be the fact that he never seems to be in a hurry. Have you noticed that?
“Be still and know that I am God,” is not just a pious phrase for a clergyman to intone while calling his people to worship. It very well may turn out to be the only way we can know Him.
Could it be that our South African friends know something we don’t?