Time in a bottle

What is it about time that is so alluring to us? We’ve been back two weeks and already, the clock has attacked. I think one of the things that make mission trips so … remarkable is that for a few days, we don’t focus on ourselves. Duh, I know.

I was watching some golf on TV this afternoon - it’s Sunday and we don’t have cable, so it’s either that or some 30 minute add for injectible (is this a word?) botulism - and I chuckled when a pro golfer looked down at his watch in the middle of the 12th hole. Now think about this – what is he looking at his watch for? Does he have a date? Is there a movie coming on that he does not want to miss? Is he bored? Why do we always want to know what time it is unless of course we are so deep into something that the lights can be turned off in the hall outside your office and you don’t even notice? You know why? It’s because there is something within us that whispers that there is something else we could be doing. It says things like; “You have a meeting” or “you’re going to miss class” or “no, it’s not over yet” or something else along those lines. Let’s face it, we have the spiritual attention span of a puppy.

Western thought is time oriented. Everything we do is based around the next thing we need to do. We don’t focus on the now, we focus on the next. Fitting people in, fitting jobs or work in, fitting God in, fitting our family in. To stay organized I have a PDA, a MacBook, and an iMac, and that’s just for work and they all just seem to make me wonder about what I have not accomplished. Anne has several calendars as well and when we go out on a date without Zachary, do you know what we talk about at dinner? We go through our calendars. We’re slaves.

In Russia, we only worried about two different times – what time the bus left the following morning and what time we needed to get up to catch said bus after we consumed our allotment of croissants and boiled eggs. Okay, that’s not entirely true – we did have to work within a time schedule at the orphanages. At the older kids (we worked with them from 1030am to 2pm) we needed to watch the clock to make our rotations. 40 minutes each of a craft, a Bible lesson, and a sport. We rotated so that everyone could do everything everyday, but there was one standing order – if a child was wanting to go deep – stay there, forget the clock.

At the little kids orphanage, (330pm until 530 or 6pm) we just watched the clock because there never seemed to be enough time to do the things we wanted to do, once we found them. (Raise your hand if humming Jim Croce. Funny enough, he wrote that song after the birth of his first ... child.) Time in a bottle? I’ll take a 2-liter with ice. With these little kids, the end of our time denoted the end of the day, which reminded us that we had one less day with the kids. Which made us look at our watches to see what day it was and then count down how many days we had left.

When we lived overseas, we lived in a culture where a 2-hour visit to someone’s home constituted a short stop over. If you wanted to borrow sugar, plan for a 2-hour, coffee fed discussion in a language you barely speak, but is friendly and loving none-the-less. Shopping for a week’s worth of food took you all day. Not kidding. All day, because everyone wants to talk to you. The people never focused on time, they focused on events. You did not “have” to do anything. We would set a meeting for a certain time and when that time came only the Americans would be there – the nationals were still wandering town spending time with people- - how dare they! A spirit led, Family Circus like serpentine path being the fastest way between two points. What would our lives be like if we spent all of our time focusing on others and not on our own agenda and …

I love Anne and Zachary, but I ache for those orphans. Still, two weeks after returning, I ache. Looking at the pictures, finding bottles of bubbles in the bottom of my backpack, talking to the new friends that were, always will be, my teammates only serves to rub in that I miss those kids. Not just the kids, I miss the focus, the energy, the passion, the love. Your whole world revolved around someone other than you. You did not matter, others mattered. I miss that.

I miss being about someone else other than myself. The duffel bags are all gone – they’re in Kenya now with the next mission team. The “Russia room” where we prepped looks like a museum - a display of missional effort. We’re all back into our work, back into our lives, but I find myself looking over at Anne and saying; “I miss being overseas on the mission field." But if I were honest. If I really wanted to be truthful, I would say this; “I miss being solely about others.”

We are perfectly made and uniquely gifted not for our own work or our own betterment or our own agenda. We are perfectly made and uniquely gifted to serve God in whatever capacity He asks. We are children of the King, adopted heirs, God’s aliens & strangers in this world and we should savor, marinate ourselves, in the time God has given us to serve Him until He calls us home. Others, not self.

On second thought, keep the time in a bottle; I’ll take an ocean of God’s love for mankind. Maybe I won’t be so rushed to drink it all in.