"Eight Minutes on the Roadside"

"Eight Minutes on the Roadside"

Jonathan had walked many roads in his lifetime-dusty tracks in South Sudan where the sun-bleached hope from the sky, crowded lanes in Kolkata thick with humanity's desperation, quiet paths along the Southern Reaches rugged coast where the wind carried both salt and solitude. But some lessons came not from distant crises or emergency tents, but from the ordinary conversations tucked inside an ordinary day, the kind you almost miss if you're walking too fast.

He remembers meeting two friends outside a café near the harbor. The morning light was soft, but their faces weren't. Their voices were low, the kind you use when pain still lingers between the ribs, when you're not sure if speaking it aloud will make it more real or less bearable.

One of them, Sarah, eyes tired but still fighting for hopeful said softly, almost apologetically, "Last week was really, really hard for me."

The other, Michael, looked startled, then stricken. "Why didn't you tell me? I would have come. You know I would have."

"I did text you."

He pulled out his phone immediately, scrolling through the blur of messages with growing distress, that particular shame of having missed someone you love. "You mean this one? 'Hey, what are you doing... want to come over?' That sounds like every other text. I had no idea you needed help. Sarah, I---"

She reached across and touched his hand gently, stopping the spiral. "I know. It's okay. I should have been clearer. But I read something last week that's been sitting with me. It said that all a human being really needs, when the world feels too heavy to carry alone, is eight minutes of someone else's time. Just eight minutes of presence to remember they're not invisible."

Jonathan felt something catch in his chest. He had spent a lifetime responding to emergencies, rushing toward brokenness with supplies and strategies, planning logistics and coordinating teams across time zones. He'd measured impact in lives saved, projects completed, systems built. Yet this small truth, eight minutes felt like someone had distilled the entire ocean of compassion into a single cup he could actually hold without spilling.

The two friends looked at each other, and something unspoken passed between them, the kind of covenant that gets made when pain has taught you what matters.

"Next time one of us needs help," Sarah said, "we'll text: 'Do you have eight minutes?'"

Michael nodded slowly, understanding settling into his features. "Just that. 'Do you have eight minutes?'"

"Just that. No drama. No long explanations. No shame. Just a simple call for presence, a call almost anyone can answer."

Jonathan stood there with his coffee cooling in his hand, feeling the weight and beauty of it. The simplicity felt almost subversive in a world that demanded you justify your pain with enough evidence before anyone would pause.

His mind drifted to the Gospel stories, to Christ pausing on His way to heal Jairus's daughter because a woman who had only touched His robe needed to be seen... to Him stopping beneath a sycamore tree to look up at Zacchaeus, a man the whole town had learned to look past... to Him sitting by a well in the hottest part of the day to talk with a woman who carried far too many silent stories and had come alone because she knew what people said about her.

Nothing rushed. Nothing performative. Nothing that would look impressive in a quarterly report.

Just presence that dignified the moment and the person standing in it.

And Jonathan realized something that felt both liberating and convicting:

In a world obsessed with big gestures and measurable impact, Jesus often moved through small ones.

He slowed down. He noticed. He made room. He gave people minutes when they needed them, never making them feel small for needing so little, never making them feel costly for needing more.

Eight minutes.

He could give that. Anyone could. Even on the busiest day. Even when exhausted. Even when your own heart was heavy. Eight minutes wasn't everything—but for someone drowning in aloneness, it could be the hand that kept them breathing until morning came.

Later that evening, Jonathan walked home through the gentle Wellington wind that always smelled faintly of the sea. He thought about how kindness doesn't always demand a lengthy conversation, a perfect solution, or eloquent words. Sometimes it is simply saying, "Yes. I have eight minutes. I'm here. You're not alone in this."

For the weary, that eight minutes becomes a lifeline, proof that they still exist, that their pain is real enough to be witnessed.

For the giver, it becomes a quiet offering to Christ, an act of worship hidden in ordinary time, unnoticed by everyone except the One who said, "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me."

And for the Wayfarer, for Jonathan, who had spent years trying to fix the world's emergencies, always measuring whether he was doing enough, it became a new kind of mission, one that felt both smaller and somehow truer:

Not always to solve, but to sit.
Not always to rescue, but to remain.
Not always to speak, but to stay.

Because in eight minutes, a soul can breathe again.
In eight minutes, loneliness can loosen its grip just enough.
In eight minutes, the kindness of Christ can slip through the cracks of an ordinary day and make someone's world feel a little less heavy, a little less dark, a little less impossible to bear.

And Jonathan whispered a prayer as he reached his doorstep, key in hand, threshold waiting:

"Lord, make me interruptible.
Make me present.
And when someone needs eight minutes
let me notice.
Let me stop.
Let me stay."

AN INVITATION

The Wayfarer invites you to understand: You don't need grand resources or perfect words to change someone's life. You simply need to show up-for eight minutes.

That's one song. Half a commute. Less time than you'll spend scrolling tonight.

But to someone sitting alone with their pain, those eight minutes can be the difference between despair and another day. Between isolation and connection. Between feeling forgotten and feeling seen.

Be interruptible. When someone asks, "Do you have eight minutes?” say yes.

Eight minutes won't solve everything. But it might save someone.

And that is enough.