At the very start of Jesus’ ministry when he was calling his first disciples, Jesus announced, “At last the time has come! The Kingdom of God is near! Turn from your sins and believe this Good News!”
Reading this, we get the sense that Jesus was pretty excited. Just look at all of those exclamation points! The people had been waiting and Jesus was there to tell them that their waiting was over.
There are two words used for time in the Greek language: “chronos” and “kairos.” Chronos is the tick-tock, tick-tock kind of time; a time that moves forward in a linear fashion. This isn’t the word Jesus is using here in the first chapter of Mark. He’s using another word for time, “kairos.” Kairos refers to a moment when everything is quite possibly about to change because it is the right time. Jesus is saying, “this is the moment you’ve been waiting for! It is the right time.” You might refer to this as a “kairos moment.”
We all have kairos moments. Most likely they happen more than we recognize. They are moments that come when we’re moving along in our day and something happens that feels different. It seems bigger. It catches our attention. Some examples could be a movie that makes you cry or makes you angry, or starting a new job and the thought of moving makes you nervous, or getting a flat tire and the pouring rain and you having some pretty interesting thoughts run through your head just before you open car door.
When these kairos moment occur, we have a choice. We can either roll on over it as we would any speed bump and keep on moving, or we can slow down, stop, and take notice of what God may be trying to reveal to us.
This summer we’ll be having weekly discussions right here on nlcf.net! We’ll hear from different individuals as they share their kairos moments. We’re calling these posts Summer Kairos Voices. We’ll hear about a variety of moments I’m sure, but in each one they’ll get to answer two questions. The first is, “What is God saying to you?” God doesn’t always speak in an audible voice, but that doesn’t mean that He’s not trying to communicate something to us, or help us learn some sort of new-to-us truth. We all hear from God in different ways at different times. No matter how he communicates, it’s always good for us to take time to hear what He’s saying, reflect on it, and then dialogue with Him and others about it.
The second question is, “What are you going to do about it?” Sometimes it’s easy to just sit and meditate on some truth or lesson God wants us to bring into our lives, but when it comes to taking that truth and moving in some new direction, well… we might be slow to get going.
On the other hand, for some of us, we hear something and before we can even recognize what God is fully trying to say, we charge forward. We don’t take enough time to reflect. Asking the question, “Now that I know what God is saying, what am I going to do about it?” is a big step. It involves putting feet to something we’ve heard. It’s about believing and acting in faith that God has something for us not only to learn, but also to do. Something to change. Something to pursue.
So stay tuned with us this summer as we post new “kairos moments” each Monday as the summer goes on. And feel free to leave comments! For now, I just wanted to give you a little introduction.
– Steve Englund