Africans Have Own Understanding of Time. Heaven May Not Agree

God taught me a lesson about time when heavy rain threatened evangelistic meetings.

By Godwin K. Lekundayo

When an African promises to visit in the morning, the arrival could be anytime between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m.

An African will show up at the pastor’s office and expect to meet rather than schedule an appointment.

If asked to introduce a visiting Adventist leader in church, an African may begin with the words, “In the interest of time” — but then speak for a full hour before ceding the pulpit to the honored guest.

You see, in Africa, time is not as important as the event.

But God taught me about heaven’s understanding of time when, as a district pastor, I led a three-week evangelistic series in my homeland, Tanzania.

Local organizers chose the dry season for the meetings in Moshi, a city at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. But heavy rains started to fall after the first week. Worried that the rain would keep people at home, I suggested that we reschedule the meetings for later.

To my surprise, the chairman of the local evangelistic committee, a lay person, refused.

“No, pastor, we are not going to postpone,” he said. “We prayed about these meetings early enough, and our Lord heard our prayers and knew the rain would fall.”

“So, what shall we do?” I said. “You can see that it is raining heavily.”

A Little Faith

“We have to have a little faith to believe that our God can be sensitive about the time of the meetings,” he said. “Let us pray this way, “Our good Lord, You can allow the rains to fall as much as You wish, but let there be no rain from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.”

This way people would have 30 minutes to travel to the 4 p.m. meetings and 30 minutes to return home after the meetings ended at 6 p.m.

I wasn’t sure about such a request, but I joined in the prayer.

The next morning, the rain fell in torrents. The downpour continued into the afternoon. But exactly at 3:30 p.m., it stopped. Our meeting started at 4 p.m., and I preached until 6 p.m. The rain started again at 6:30 p.m.

The weather followed this schedule for two weeks. Rain poured down until 3:30 p.m., stopped, and then started again at 6:30 p.m.

One day, a visitor arrived at the meeting site at 3 p.m. to get a good seat. He waited for some time and, seeing the heavy downpour, decided that the meeting would be canceled and left. The next day he asked whether we had met.

“Of course,” I replied. “We didn’t ask God to stop the rain at 3 p.m. We asked for 3:30 p.m., so you should have been sensitive about that.”

“I’ll never make that mistake again,” the man said.

After that, he waited until 3:30 p.m. to make his way to the meetings, and he never got wet.

Story continues below

12 Baptisms

On Sabbath, we suddenly realized that we had forgotten to ask the Lord to stop the rain for the morning worship services. But God knew our weakness, and no rain fell from 9 a.m. until noon.

On the last Sabbath, I baptized 12 people in a river. As I brought the last person out of the water, the rain started to fall.

“You are so blessed,” I told him. “You are being baptized by the river water and by heavenly rain.”

The experience taught me that God is sensitive to time. While God may not face time constraints as we do, He does expect us to be sensitive to time, too, and to be good stewards of time. “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time,” Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:15-16 (NKJV).

If I had gone overtime in those evangelistic meetings, people would have had to walk home in the rain. Some may have caught colds or simply not returned. Time management is important.

Now, in the interest of time, let me end this story by inviting you to join me in praying to the Lord to be sensitive to time: “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalms 90:12).

Godwin K. Lekundayo is the president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Northern Tanzania Union Conference.