Late Again

Plans had been made to give a presentation relevant to the needs of a community. The list of items necessary for the event could all be checked off: venue, time, invites, and more. We’d all done our part to make this a success.

Or, so we thought.

When confirming our speaker, it once again became apparent there was a problem – yet again. Same person, same problem. All the time! This time, they had neglected to add the event to their calendar. Now, they’re double-booked. Is this your behavior too? Do you do the same thing to others? You make commitments, others arrange their schedule to accommodate you, then you make changes and neglect to inform them. You leave them hanging.

Or, are you always late or the last to arrive for an organized event – one you’ve committed to? Your running late becomes a problem for others, they are left in a difficult position trying to restructure and shuffle people, places, and things around what you had initially said you would do.

This is such an established part of who you are that you consider it to be okay – it is who you are, and what you are. You are busy, you are rushed, and so others must work around your busyness, your schedule – irrespective if you change it or not. You have no problem in keeping a group of twenty people waiting and waiting for you, or simply not showing up.

But, what about them? What about twenty individual people arranging their lives to meet you and speak with you. Yes, that’s twenty people who sacrificed and changed their schedules to be on time and, yet again, you let them down. Is your life any more rushed, busy and stressed than theirs?

If you are the one who always runs late, cancels late or repeatedly forgets to calendar dates correctly what should you know?

1. You are selfish – yes, you are!

2. You’re disrespectful of others – your schedule has more value than theirs,

3. You consider yourself to be more important than others – your day holds more importance than anyone else’s.

How should you respond to the above three statements made about you?

1. Examine your life, and theirs to see what is true

2. Speak to those whom you leave hanging, find out what their day was like to be on time. What is their reality? What is yours?

3. What does your repeated lateness show about your life that needs to change?

4. Where does change start, with you or those you let down?

• The Spirit however, produces in human life fruits such as these: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, tolerance and self-control—and no law exists against any of them. Those who belong to Christ have crucified their old nature with all that it loved and lusted for. If our lives are centred in the Spirit, let us be guided by the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-25).

• He has by his own action given us everything that is necessary for living the truly good life, in allowing us to know the one who has called us to him, through his own glorious goodness. It is through him that God’s greatest and most precious promises have become available to us men, making it possible for you to escape the inevitable disintegration that lust produces in the world and to share in God’s essential nature. For this very reason you must do your utmost from your side, and see that your faith carries with it real goodness of life. Your goodness must be accompanied by knowledge, your knowledge by self-control, your self-control by the ability to endure. Your endurance too must always be accompanied by devotion to God; that in turn must have in it the quality of brotherliness, and your brotherliness must lead on to Christian love (2 Peter 1:3-7).

#late