Towards Pentecost

I have heard the expression that if you give God your little toe, He will eventually pull the rest of you in with it. I have often tried to give God what I can offer while trying to reserve a good chunk for myself. One of my best spiritual companions challenged me in college, calling me out in the kitchen of the student-union house, to man up and take the leadership position that God had opened up for me. Since then, there have been too many instances where I have tried to take the easier road, and yet continually find myself in bizarre situations that only God could create.

Fr. Francis asked me to lead a novena to the Holy Spirit, every evening at 6pm for the parish. Easy, right? Me and my hard-to-understand accent will lead a nice novena I printed out from EWTN, add-lib some prayers, we’re done in 20 minutes. That’s a novena, right? Well…these Sierra Leoneans don’t walk for two hours on Sundays to get to the parish and expect a 45-minute Mass, nor were they content with my attempts at an American-style, snappy prayer session. “Too short” was the chief complaint. I begged Fr. Francis to give this novena to someone else; he just laughed and told me to grab him a beer.

Tonight I allowed the Spirit room to work. One of the men offered to translate for me, since to half the congregation I am unintelligible. So I offered a brief reflection, and then invited everyone to enter into a period of silence to allow for time to listen to the Spirit. After about eight minutes, I looked around, expecting several faces to be giving me that “get on with it” face and to move on with the novena. Everyone’s head was bowed. This continued for 15 minutes before a person opened their eyes. The faith of the people here is rich, indeed. Moral of the story, the novena tonight clocked in at 45 minutes. I more-than-doubled my previous results—how’s that for American productivity? I mean…to God be all the glory, of course.

While I certainly love the highly caffeinated, one-the-go pace of American life, that doesn’t work here in Africa. One of the locals told me that, “When God created time, He gave Africa MUCH time.” Patience is not my strongest virtue, but if God can develop it in this stubborn, sweaty, and (by now very) smelly servant, than there is hope for us all. The people take their time here…and they are forcing me to do the same.

-Bob
written, 06/03/11