In my previous post, I commented on how miserly I am with my time. Considering (as you can imagine), how I spend my time is of great importance to me. I want full say, full control over what I do with the time I have. Apparently, this is true even when it comes to service.
Frequently, we’re unaware of how rooted our attitudes are until we’re in new settings. This was true of Poverello—it merely magnified my deep-seated attitude toward time.
During the third week of Lent last year, my husband asked me how volunteering was going. I remember telling him that I felt like there was a lot of standing around time; that I wasn’t doing very much. While absurd, I remember telling him I would like to “efficient-ize” serving the homeless. He chuckled at my comment and said, “Remember, the time you’ve most enjoyed has been talking with the other people volunteering.” Once again, he was right.
After hearing my husband’s comment, I felt like Saul (Paul) in Acts 9:18—something like scales fell from my eyes and my sight was restored. I chose to approach my remaining time at Poverello through the lens of his comment. My big takeaway was this:
Service isn’t (always) about efficiency.
While glaringly obvious to many, this revelation was God’s greatest gift to me during those 40 days. What I failed to realize, but which my husband’s exhortation unearthed, was that I was approaching service like I approached my to-do list. Service was a task to be accomplished, quantified by how many people I served, how many tables I bussed, how busy I was during the time I was giving. Standing around talking to people, while waiting for the kitchen expeditor to call out which plates were ready, didn’t feel like service.
However, the paradigm shift brought on by my husband’s comment allowed me to approach Poverello not as something to do, but as something to experience. God wasn’t asking me to be busier. God was inviting me to enjoy the people, enjoy being a part of something bigger than myself, and dare I say, enjoy the inefficiency. These very lulls and lags created the space, the quiet, for me to reflect on the meaning of service. And ultimately, to reflect on my attitude toward time. My biggest takeaway was this:
Time isn’t (always) about efficiency.
When it comes to time, I often confuse quality with efficiency. Ironically, in an effort to optimize or “efficient-ize” my time, I frequently forsake the very quality I seek. To clarify, I do think we should be conscientious of our time.[1] Time is a valuable resource and needs to be stewarded well. However, for me, I often conflate stewarding with streamlining, and end up sacrificing relationships and life’s simple pleasures on the altar of efficiency. Poverello taught me that quality and efficiency aren’t synonymous; and that sometimes, inefficiency actually yields higher quality.
There were many sub-lessons within these overarching ones—the importance of serving with a community of people, the church’s call to service, that giving time does not mean losing time—but the greatest of these was simply that service (and time) are about being present, conversing, and indulging in relationship.
[1] More on this in the next post.