Never Be Late (originally sent August 15, 1999)
June 23, 2008
Dear Friends,
This week we want to consider one of the truly great mysteries of our time. We are not talking about Stonehenge, crop circles or Sasquatch, but habitual lateness to Sunday School. Why is it that some people are ALWAYS late?
You know these guys. We are on the third stanza of the hymn “Never Be Late to Your Sunday School Class” when these guys sheepishly slip in the door to our sly grins and nudges. The same people are not just late to Sunday School, but late to just about everything.
You would think habitual lateness would be the easiest problem to cure in the world. Let’s say your problem is that you are always 5 minutes late to Sunday School. Easy cure, right? A preschooler could figure this one out. I’ll give you three possible solutions and you pick the correct answer. A) Set your alarm 5 minutes later. B) Do not change your clock. C) Set your alarm 5 minutes earlier. If you said “C”, you have picked the logical solution. You also have no clue about late people.
My wife is neither a late person nor a early person. She is an “exactly on time person.” This creates a problem for us since I am a big time early person. I want to take my time driving to meeting, get there 10- 15 minutes before it starts, help setup and talk to a few people before we have to sit down. LeAnn is the kind that rushes around all morning like a whirling dervish until she just hits her seat panting as the last note of “take your seats” music fades into the distance.
LeAnn is in many ways like a habitually late person. She cannot force her mind to understand that unless you leave earlier, you are not going to get there any earlier.
I tried the simple strategy of setting the alarm earlier for her. She simply fills the extra time with extra activity. If I set the alarm 10 minutes earlier, she curls the girl’s hair. If I set the alarm a half an hour earlier, she cleans the kitchen. Whatever amount of time I set the alarm earlier than before, she manages to fill it with something. I am fully convinced that if I set the alarm early enough on Sunday morning and left the paint cans out, she could have the house painted before we left for meeting.
My solution to date is to have a Sunday morning countdown. About an hour before we leave, I become the town crier. “It’s an hour before we have to leave and all’s well.” “It’s 25 minutes before we have to leave and all’s well.” “It’s one minute before we have to leave and you BETTER be heading for the car.” Sure enough, 5-10 minutes LATER we are heading down the driveway with one or more of my three still getting ready. We always have at least one dressing, eating breakfast, brushing hair or applying makeup in the car. (I don’t even have teenagers yet!)
Everyone knows that the only way to get a habitually late person to be on time is to change the time on them. If Sunday School starts at 9:30 AM, tell them it starts at 9:15 AM. They will be there right on time….just like us.
Have a great week,
Kyle Tucker
Due to the demands of Bible school season, I will be taking a brief four week break from the TFTW. In the meantime, I will share with you some TFTW classics. Enjoy!
Comments»
This TFTW disappoints me. The reason is because it’s not scriptural, very one sided, and poorly informed.
I am habitually late. I have spent time and money trying to “solve my problem” as it’s not only embarrassing, but it’s costly. I have come close to loosing jobs, friends, missing rides, trains, buses, and almost flights. I have failed courses, and my marks have suffered.
I have sought psychological treatment for lateness, and have even tried drugs – namely Riddelin, and Busporin. Busporin calmed my mind, but my friends begged me to stop taking it – i became a zombi, but i was ontime for work. Riddelin helped me study and pass exams, but i didn’t help me be ontime.
Personally i’m annoyed by people who have a great need to be early. While i know that my problem is deeper than a psycological pent. I do try and blame my father who was cronically early – so much so that “I’m the only one that does any work around here” because by the time others arrived for memorial, our family had “done all the work” if others started to arrive earlier, we had to be earlier still. This false need to be early drove me early, and i would deliberately do everything in my power to dawdle, and make us late, for the shame of an early bird Dad. There is little in scripture to praise early birds, certainly there is counsel and reprimand for those who are lazy, or who spend half their life in bed. But equally annoying are people who brag about getting up at 6:00am every morning, sure if i went to bed at 9:00 every night, i would be fresh at 5:00, aren’t i so special?!
Habitual lateness for some of us is a medical condition, it’s treatable with drugs, but the treatment is worse than the cure! Like schizophrenia or manic depression, chronic lateness is a condition that is treated with contempt by brother and sisters that should know better. Jesus never condemns people for being late, but there is a notable example of Jesus being late – that of the healing of Lazarus. Yet, he was late with very good reason. It was because he knew that by being late, he could serve God’s purpose. This is not an excuse for being late, “well, Jesus was late once”. But sometime we are late for a reason. Does the early bird stop on the way to the meeting to help the little old lady with a flat tire or is being on time more important. What could you be doing with all the time you waste staring at your watch? Before condemning your family as a lost cause, maybe try and understand what’s going on in their thinking. Chances are like me, they have a hard time explaining it too. Maybe like me, they appreciate a kind wife that helps me organize and be ontime, without criticizing me and belittling me. In fact, she drives me crazy, because she needs to leave as soon as everything is over, and i’ve still got a tonn of stuff to do, including socializing. My suggestion, your constant barrage of “you BETTER be heading for the car” is doing more harm that good. Just as i have accepted that i talk too much, am balding, i accept that I’m constantly late, I try hard to plan ahead, and have my own ways of dealing with lateness, like planning to go to bed earlier, and not doing so many of the things i feel i should be doing (re-prioritizing) But i’m still often late, and it’s still embarrassing, and being told that i’m always late doesn’t help. It just makes me angry and ask “who ever told you that being early makes you so special?”
Love in Christ, Ken. ps. thanks for your TFTW! along with being late, i could never commit to doing anything like this, it wouldn’t get done. BUT! you do a great job. I would however LOVE to see an updated 2008 version of: “My solution to date is to have a Sunday morning countdown.”
I must agree with Ken on this point. There are many reasons for being late to many things. I would like to always be on time, but it just doesn’t always happen. Maybe some late people have burdens in their life that make them very tired; maybe they have things to do that you can’t imagine unless you actually walk in their shoes for a mile or two; maybe distresses in their life that you think are in the dim distant past cause them to sleep poorly. Sometimes the person who is late, is desperately seeking the solace of meeting time, and the experience of ‘our sly grins and nudges.’ makes them feel even worse, and possibly affects the spiritual nourishment they gain from managing to attend the ecclesia. We are told to ‘Judge not that we be not judged’. It is true that some people are habitually un disciplined about time keeping, when if they applied themselves, they could be on time. But this is not the case for everybody, and I think we should be careful to ensure we don’t ‘Tar everyone with the same brush’. Paul chastised an ecclesia where they didn’t all wait for each other to be ready before they started, ‘ one is hungry etc’ clearly illustrating that this is an age old occurence, and that we need to show patience with each other. I look forward to your return from bible school season, and some thought provoking TFTW’s. Love in Christ Nicci
Can anyone give me the words of the hymn?