the spirituality of punctuality

Let love be without hypocrisy...

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.  

Honor one another above yourselves. 

Romans 12:9a, 10

I have a problem of being late, but only by 3-7 minutes.  I'm really consistently punctual--- at being 3 to 7 minutes late.   I think I must have been born 3-7 minutes late.  

I come upon it honestly.  I come from a long line of late-comers.  But it's not purposeful or lazy, it is due to a self-centered compulsiveness to complete tasks and a lack of realism of how much one can do in an alloted time.  It's an unhealthy need to attend to personal detail instead of respecting the other person.  Bottom line:  lateness is a deficiency of love.  

One could make a case for seeing it as more efficient or industrious to pack in one last task.  But truly there is nothing good in it.  It disrespects the person with whom I am to meet.  Usually, they will say 'no problem!' because they somehow see me as a well-meaning, busy guy doing important things, and excuse it.  But if they knew-- and some figure it out eventually-- it is a longstanding pattern.  

My father in law would say:  if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late.   I admire this greatly.  And I've tried my best to be like this.  I've turned over a whole tree-full of new leaves trying to change, for as long as I can remember.  I've tried the gimmicks of setting clocks early, writing earlier times down, and cutting down on hurrysickness, on the sheer number of meetings per day.  No dice.  My efforts have had very limited success.  Until recently I honestly didn't even see what the big deal was.  [First sign of being in denial].  Doggone it, people still like me... and they understand, right?  Being on time isn't a big enough draw for me.  There must be something more.  

That something more is, as always, love.  I not only need a sustained changed habit, I need to do it for the right reason--- honoring other people more than myself is the law of love (Rm.13:8).  Anything less than this will fail.  And God must change my heart—the core of me-- for the proper motive to exist.   

And I've asked for help.  Two of my friends have this same problem.  We have shared the dynamics of our lateness,  embarrassing specifics about exactly why we chose to be late and exactly what our thinking was at the point we could've been early, but chose to do more.  When you hear yourself articulate why you did something, you can hear how self-serving and ridiculous it is.  It is a lateness support group.    We text each other sometimes to celebrate on-time-ness.  

Lately, finally, through utter futility coupled with sincere prayer, something is changing in me.  The scales are tipping--- I desire to love and respect the other person more than more tasks.  And now I'm finding there are other advantages:  being more present, prayerful, watchful, and reflective of what the meeting is about and what God might be up to, rather than harried, anxious, and guilty.   It's a minor miracle, and it's about time...