Between Chronos and Kairos



Transition can bring out some creative ways of viewing your life decisions. Since I'm young and (partially) unemployed, I face many difficult questions about what I want my life to look like, the goals I want to achieve, and the hopes that I have to remain unflinchingly faithful to Jesus along the way. Such questions can test the limits of my sanity.

A recent conversation with my Dad reminded me that the ancient Greeks had two ways of viewing time, and it is why there are actually two words in the New Testament for time: chronos and kairos (yup, I know, nerdy professor stuff, but I love it!). For a description better than any that I could give, read this great article by an Orthodox priest describing the two. Basically, chronos is the quantity that describes, days, years, decades, millenia, eons. But kairos is different, it is eternity encapsulated in the moment, a perpetual "now." I know, I don't really get it, either. The way the author describes kairos resonates with how God has been speaking to me lately:
Here on earth, kairos is time as significant and decisive. This is the time of which St. Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 6:1--"In a favorable time (kairo dekto) I heard you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the most favorable time (nun kairos euprósdektos); behold, now (nun) is the day of salvation." The only time we can ever really seize is the now. Now is the present instant, the marked pulsing of the heart, the moment to lay hold on eternity.

It's helpful for me to remember that only Jesus can hold eternity in his hand, because when my mind tries to grasp for his place in the cosmos, I inevitably slip and stumble. But doubt is healthy, instructive, and important. After all, if Jesus didn't doubt his own journey and struggles (think about his time in the desert, or in the Garden), he couldn't relate to our own pain in its fullness. I'm lucky that scripture can help me relate so well to that picture of eternity; it remains my struggle to remember to find him in the simple, everyday, beautiful things that bring some consistency and clarity to my otherwise upside-down, inside-out, emerging adulthood. I know that you all see him as your anchor in the midst of it all, as well, that's why I need my friends and family to bring me back to earth. 

I hope you know that this is one of the ways that you bring Jesus into the world: by allowing him to shine through you in a way that people can recognize, and not just remain an abstract idea or a pretty picture on the wall. You have certainly done this for me.

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