Can Keeping Other People Waiting Become a Matter of Love?

The person at the other end of the appointment

Someone has arranged the chairs, another person has left work, and a parent has organised care for a child. The agreed time arrives. One person is still doing something else, quite sure that everybody can wait. Sometimes there is a serious reason for the delay. Sometimes the reason is that other people’s time has scarcely entered the calculation. The clock alone cannot tell us which. Christian love asks us to notice the people whose day our decision has affected.

Philippians 2 begins with encouragement in Christ, love and fellowship of the Spirit before calling believers to humility. Susan Eastman stresses that Christ comes near to us before we are asked to imitate him. Responsibility for an appointment therefore grows from received grace. Arriving promptly cannot purchase salvation or prove that we are more valuable than someone delayed. ^{1, 2}

Paul writes, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Philippians 2:4). That concern can include a neighbour’s waiting time. My next task may be interesting or important. It does not follow that the other person’s commitments can be ignored. ¹

Susan Hylen reads Ephesians 5 within the letter’s larger movement from reconciliation in Christ to a shared life of love. Its instruction about wise living has a communal setting. Care about time belongs within that life, including the ordinary work of making an arrangement other people can trust. ³

Agree what time means

Paul Mills warns against making clock measurement the master of Christian living. That warning deserves to be heard alongside the need for reliability. A timetable can serve neighbours, and it can become a demand that everyone live at one preferred speed. We need to ask what a particular arrangement is for. ⁵

Even research on the pace of life requires this distinction. Robert Levine and Ara Norenzayan measured walking speed, postal transactions and public clocks in selected cities. Those measures do not reveal whether an individual keeps an appointment. A hurried city and a considerate neighbour are different things. Speed itself is a poor measure of love. ⁶

When Lawrence White and colleagues asked university students in three countries to judge hypothetical appointments, what counted as inappropriately early or late varied with the situation. We can avoid a good deal of confusion by saying what an invitation means before assuming that everyone understands it alike. ⁷

Wendelien van Eerde and Sana Azar’s later questionnaire found both similarities and differences among its three selected groups. A simple division between people governed by clocks and people governed by events explained only part of the results. Such findings offer no national moral ranking. We still need to learn how the particular people meeting together understand the arrangement. ⁸

A meal with friends may have an agreed arrival window. A shared lift needs a departure time. A meeting may distinguish refreshments from the start of its work. Say which is intended. Quietly announcing an earlier time because everybody is expected to disbelieve it can leave conscientious newcomers waiting and make the arrangement harder to understand.

Notice what the delay costs

Joseph Allen and colleagues’ comparison across six countries used imagined workplace meeting situations. Longer delays and a leader’s lateness could increase the frustration reported by punctual attendees. The frustration was generally mild. We need neither dramatise every delay nor dismiss the inconvenience to people who arrived when asked. ⁹

In a separate experiment, student groups waited for a member who never arrived, then worked with less time remaining for their task. Delayed starts went with poorer discussion and outcomes. The minutes before we arrive may already be affecting what other people can accomplish together. Keeping them waiting deserves thought, even when the delay feels small to us. ¹⁰

Andreas Göttlich’s analysis makes a further distinction. Someone may deliberately make another person wait, or waiting may be an incidental result of other responsibilities. We should not assume the first from the delay alone. Yet the waiting person’s own activity is constrained in either case. Finding something to read does not make the imposed arrangement disappear. ¹¹

Consider someone waiting to give a lift. They may be unable to begin another task because departure could be imminent. The cost is uncertainty as well as elapsed time. A truthful update allows them to choose whether to continue waiting, rearrange the journey or attend to something else.

An influential field experiment by Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini found that introducing a small fine at selected Haifa day care centres increased actual late collection. The teacher still had to remain with the child. Paying the charge did not give that person back the time spent waiting. ²⁷

Cherie Metcalf and colleagues later found a different response in hypothetical day care scenarios: introducing a fine reduced intended lateness. Intended choices in a scenario differ from actual collection under everyday pressures, so the studies resist a universal rule about fines. They also leave us a personal question: would paying a charge settle all that we owe the person kept waiting? ²⁸

Make responsibility possible

In Andrew Ng and Melissa Beresford’s interviews with thirteen selected San José residents, awkward journeys and unreliable options consumed time. One bus rider described buses arriving late, early or already full. Having a route available need not mean having a dependable journey. An invitation becomes kinder when the organiser takes that difficulty seriously. ¹²

Nate Wessel and Steven Farber compared timetables with recorded vehicle movements for four North American transport agencies and found that scheduled accessibility and actual service could differ. Leave a margin for a journey where possible. When the service defeats a reasonable plan, an understanding response can help the delayed person join the activity without another burden of embarrassment. ¹³

In Sahed Hossen Sajib’s qualitative interviews in Dhaka, a participant described how travel time made returning to family difficult. That account directs our attention beyond the meeting room. An activity also takes the time needed to reach it and get home. A short gathering can require a much larger commitment from someone living farther away. ¹⁴

Disability also interrupts easy assumptions about control. Ellen Samuels describes, from her own experience, how illness and external routines can reshape time. A person may need a different pace or an arrangement with more room for change. Ask about the difficulty before treating it as carelessness. Listening can reveal a practical adjustment we had not considered. ¹⁵

John Swinton’s theological reflection on receiving care insists that dependence does not diminish human dignity. Applied to shared time, this means that a person who needs a slower journey or more assistance has not become less worthy of our company. Love can require adjusting the arrangement itself. ¹⁶

Claire Wolfteich asks churches that depend on women’s volunteer work to take time poverty seriously. Her challenge reaches an organiser who asks for more help without considering existing responsibilities. Before adding another demand, find out what care, work or travel already makes it difficult to meet. A willing person may have no spare capacity. ¹⁸

Jill Snodgrass places Christian discernment about time within people’s different social circumstances. A wise arrangement therefore needs attention to the people who will live with it. A parent managing an unexpected care need and someone who casually begins another optional task should not automatically receive the same judgment. ¹⁹

Some time pressure does involve choices. Robert Goodin and colleagues distinguish actual free time from potentially discretionary time after necessities. Their model invites us to examine commitments we could reconsider. Repeatedly promising more than we can reasonably do may leave other people carrying the cost of our reluctance to decline an invitation. ²⁰

Tania Burchardt asks whether people can actually exercise the discretion a calculation attributes to them. Her alternative model attends to responsibilities, resources and infrastructure. This gives self examination a generous companion: we can reconsider our avoidable overcommitment while recognising that another person’s available choices may be much narrower than ours. ²¹

The organiser has responsibilities too

Michelle Bastian’s study of time and community argues that arrangements of time help shape belonging. They are part of community life itself. A group that repeatedly chooses times some members cannot manage should consider how its arrangements affect participation, alongside its concern about punctual attendance. ¹⁷

Laura Giurge and colleagues’ research review directs attention to time burdens created by organisations. Organisers have a useful place to begin: what unnecessary waiting or repeated work does this arrangement impose? Reducing an avoidable demand may help people participate more than another reminder to manage their time better. ³⁵

In Desmond Leach and colleagues’ surveys, aspects of meeting design, including an agenda, were associated with attendees’ judgments of usefulness. Asking people to arrive promptly should accompany preparation that gives their presence a clear purpose. They deserve to know what needs their attention and why their contribution matters. ²²

Simone Kauffeld and Nale Lehmann Willenbrock’s observations of industrial teams connect constructive discussion and useful action with meeting outcomes. A practical meeting benefits when people can identify a problem and agree what to do next. Helping that work along still leaves room for lament, disagreement and difficult truth. Listening patiently can be part of doing the work well. ²³

An organiser can prepare what is needed, start the agreed work, and finish with regard for journeys and responsibilities afterwards. If an unexpected need requires more time, explain it and release those who must leave. A person who cannot stay indefinitely has not necessarily withdrawn their love. Ending well is also a form of welcome.

In Gerrit Antonides and colleagues’ short telephone waiting experiments, timing information could change perceived duration without making every wait more acceptable. A useful update tells people what is happening and helps them decide what to do. It should serve their freedom to respond, rather than become a technique for securing their patience indefinitely. ²⁴

Repair the inconvenience honestly

When we have been careless, a clear apology can name what happened and what we will change. In Roy Lewicki and colleagues’ scenario studies, responsibility, explanation and repair mattered in participants’ assessments. Those concerns belong together in an ordinary apology too: acknowledge the inconvenience, explain truthfully, and act on what can be put right. ²⁵

Sarah White and colleagues examined actual surgeon consultations, including the few occasions when lateness was explicitly addressed. Patients sometimes explained that they had other appointments. The exchanges show how a practical consequence can need attention alongside an apology. We can hear “I need to leave soon” without demanding that the waiting person first assure us everything is fine. ²⁶

A brief explanation should tell the truth. If you cannot give a dependable arrival time, say so. If the delay would leave someone stranded, help make another arrangement. Where carelessness has become a pattern, change the habit that creates it. Asking for patience does not transfer all responsibility to the person inconvenienced.

A clock cannot measure the whole good

Ecclesiastes 3 names seasons of birth, death, planting, mourning and joy. Kathryn Schifferdecker reads its wider passage as an invitation to humility and receiving ordinary gifts. It does not give us a technique for controlling every interruption. A bereavement or an immediate human need can require abandoning the intended timetable. ^{1, 29}

Elaine Wainwright draws attention to the poem’s paired movements of life, including planting and uprooting. These are processes to attend to, rather than one continuous demand for speed. Being considerate about an appointment need not make us impatient with the slower seasons in which other people are living. ³⁰

Brian Volck’s reflection in A Prophet to the Peoples stresses the importance of spending time with people whose struggles could otherwise remain abstractions. An efficient programme cannot replace acquaintance. We should arrange time carefully partly so that people receive attention when we meet, rather than watching us hurry towards the next item. ³¹

Yu Niiya’s survey research distinguishes experiencing time together as shared from treating it entirely as one person’s gain and another’s loss. That distinction challenges constant accounting. When people freely enjoy companionship, both can receive something good from the same hour. We need room for that generosity alongside regard for the commitments they have made elsewhere. ³²

Wolfgang Fellner’s philosophical account likewise includes meaning and belonging among the goods of an activity. A visit is not necessarily wasteful because it produces no measurable output. The aim is to honour the person, including their freedom to give time generously, rather than price every minute of their presence. ³³

Jenny Odell’s critique of treating human time as a production input exposes the danger at the other extreme. We can become exact about minutes while overlooking the life being lived within them. An agreed time should help people meet and serve one another. It should not become a warrant to treat them as machinery. ³⁴

Begin again with regard for others

Sally Brown reads Ephesians 5’s Spirit filled life as a concern shared by the community. Pentecostal faith should therefore make us willing to seek the Spirit’s help in ordinary consideration. An account of spiritual fervour cannot excuse ignoring the neighbour waiting for us, and a demand for order must remain open to the neighbour who needs help. ^{1, 4}

Some days, keeping the agreed time is a small act of love. On another day, love means changing the arrangement because someone’s need is greater. In both cases, the other person belongs in our attention. We can make a clearer agreement, acknowledge an inconvenience, offer practical help or leave space for an explanation. The clock becomes useful when it serves that regard for one another.