Communication

Timely response

by jay supetran
05/01/18
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Proverbs 15:23 - A person finds joy in giving an apt reply—and how good is a timely word!

Among my pet peeves are the attitude of some people to ignore or delay answering messages. With the current state-of-the-art tools in communications, we have multiple platforms to reach anybody anywhere in the world and there is no rational excuse for not answering, or delaying answering messages. Emails, social media sites and mobile phones with international roaming capacity are free or are charging minimal fees to send and receive messages. But as the world is deluge with so many communications, many people find it hard to respond.

I remember the time when growing up without a mobile phone and internet, I was always excited expecting a response to handwritten letters I sent.   Letter-writing was my past-time when I was growing up, and I made the habit of browsing through the pen pal columns of magazines and look for people who want to meet friends through writing. I get excited every time I see our neighborhood mail man walking towards our house with a bunch of letters. No time was wasted in answering those letters.

 At present, we have more tools, but the advent of gadgets and apps have also multiplied the problems related to communications – spam clogged our inboxes, phising – stealing your virtual personality – and fake news became a challenge every day. Enormous time is spent on checking inboxes, robbing some people of time they devote to real work.   People began to ignore messages, even from those coming from friends and loved ones. And so the tool that was supposed to help people do faster and work more became the high wall that prevented them from being more productive and keep healthy communication with other people.

Timely response demonstrate a professional attitude. It also show the person as a mature Christian, as the Bible instructs us to reply to messages sent to us, even if it is only an acknowledgement. It is not only good manners but reflects kindness and goodness, two of the fruits of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23.