I keep coming back to kairos time versus chronos time lately…
Even in writing this devotional, it’s taken f o r e v e r to write. I’ve been thinking about it and praying about it for literal days and not until half an hour before my alarm did I suddenly wake up with everything clicking into place.
As annoying as it has been, I can see how the Lord was using this moment as another practical lesson/teaching moment for me about kairos and chronos time… but more importantly, about how he is working in the midst of time.
The Ancient Greeks had two words for time. Kairos time meant the right, critical, or opportune moment. While Chronos time meant sequential or chronological time. In essence, chronos is quantitative and kairos is qualitative.
Understanding this distinction with how to measure time would have been dangerous knowledge for me to have as a child. I can totally imagine a little Laura insisting that chronos time is keeping her from playing longer and that it is not for her and that she prefers kairos time… and, to be honest, grown up Laura often feels the same way!
As the people of God, we have a special mission to join him in … and that will often require us also partnering up with his timing. Although we function in chronological time, our awareness to these special, how-in-the-world-did-that-just-happen moments needs to increase as well!
The word kairos is used in the New Testament 86 and chronos is used 54 times. Biblically, kairos would be used to talk about a “moment” or a “season” such as a “harvest time”.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the last time I was writing a devotional for LifeSpring, I was writing about how important it is to recognize the season that we’re in.
[Kairos can also mean weather! * mind blown *]
On Sunday I was struck by the fact that we seem to be living in an especially significant Kairos Moment as a church. As our own church family at Lifespring, and also as a member of the collective Church.
At the same time Rodney was preaching about living out the call to Truth and Reconciliation through the Grace of God, Zoey (his eldest) was standing up in front of Kidz Harbour sharing about the time their family met and had dinner with some Indigenous friends in Vancouver.
I hadn’t planned ahead to have Zoey come up and share. The video we were watching at KH lagged and as the wondrous Sam fixed things up, Zoey whispered to me that she had actually met some people who were Indigenous! I asked if she would be willing to share later on and she nodded…
In the moment that our technology wrinkled up our chronos schedule, the Lord was unveiling a beautiful kairos moment.
When we are learning to hear from God and focusing our attention on what God is speaking to us, we must also be watching what is happening around us. There are so many intricately incredible moments that we miss when we get frustrated about things going wrong or being late in our chronos timelines.
Take heart and remember that even when things fall apart and make no sense, God IS working in those places!! He will never stop moving and working and bringing about redemptive moments for us.
Lord we thank You for being the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
Thank you for being everything in between as well.
In times of frustration or anxiety, may we learn to lean into You and to find hope knowing that You never slumber nor sleep; You are never sitting idly by.
Thank you for working on our behalf and for continually inviting us into Kairos moments along the way.
We want to trust you more and more!
Thank you for never leaving us and for being our consistency in a world that seems to spin out of control more often than not.
We love you,
Amen.
P.S. All of this was written as my housemate slept in. Are we late getting to the gym? Yes. But this was (finally) the moment for me to get the devotion written.