She shuffled off down the hall leading to the consultation room. Not slow, but definitely not rushed. The nurse is the gatekeeper to all healthcare. You cannot proceed in the hospital without her knowing your temperature, blood pressure, height and weight. With my statistics in hand, she sets an unambitious pace. Just fast enough.
Few people visit Malawi without commenting on the pace of life. As a visitor, you are rarely a user of government services and so the slower rhythm is appreciated. If you need to go to the hospital, deal with road traffic services or visit immigration, then that unhurried pace is perhaps a little more frustrating.
But over time, I came to realise it’s not a matter of fast and slow, or of time well-spent or wasted. Instead, it revealed how much I measure time by my own expectations. Without timetabled internal demands, is anything late or early?
When friends in Malawi asked us what we’ll miss about life there, I’d say the pace of life. But I’d struggle to articulate what I meant. The nurse’s shuffle gave me something of an allegory to explain what I meant. A question back in Scotland gave me an opportunity to find a further layer of meeting – in what ways has Malawi changed you?
On the surface, we might say we’ve learned to live life at a different pace. But really, it’s about realising that we’re not the ones who set the pace. I can slow to the pace of the nurse’s step – and, having pneumonia, I was happy to do so – or I can speed up to the hustle of Edinburgh’s commuters. But that’s not change.
Trusting that God not only orders our steps but sets their time is a harder lesson. And that does require change.
C.S. Lewis explored our illogical infatuation with time in Screwtape Letters. There, Hell’s administrators encourage humanity’s preoccupation with controlling their time:
“You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to him employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which h allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.”
When, however, we let go of this perceived “birthright”, we might come to understand that many things are neither fast nor slow. And therefore to trust that for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
Photo by Luanda Bauma Primo on Unsplash
Comments
Add Your CommentThanks, Gary. I hope you are all safely settled back in Scotland, although that does take time. Trusting that you can continue more in ‘Malawi time’ rather than ‘Scotland time’ and so the lesson you learned in your years in Malawi will stay with you. Wishing you well in your SBS work. 🙏😀🙏