Learning To Live In God's Time

When I was a kid I used to think about eternity, and it would blow my mind.  I would try to imagine something that never ended, and it eluded my imagination.  I was taught that Heaven would be like one long worship service that would last forever. This sounded to me like the worst thing in the history of ever.  

Truth be told, I found church to be mind-numbingly boring when I was a kid.  It already felt like church lasted forever.  Trying to imagine a worship service that never ended was beyond me.  

The trouble with conversations about eternity for most Christians is that it almost always focuses on time.  That was the extent of my youthful understanding of eternity, in fact.  I could only understand eternity by relating it to other things that felt like they lasted forever.  

But eternity, at least in the Biblical understanding of eternity (the kind that Jesus talked about, more specifically), isn't about the passage of time, or measuring time or even about time as we understand time at all.  

The writers who wrote the New Testament utilized the ancient Greek understanding of time when the spoke of eternity. They spoke of chronos and kairos.  Chronos is a word that describes how we understand time and how it passes in linear ways--day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.  

Kairos on the other hand is a word that is best defined with the phrase "God's time," which can't be measured in linear ways--it is simply experienced.  And here's something else that we need to get our minds around if we are going to fully experience what it means to live the abundant life Jesus wants for us:  

Kairos moments are happening all around us, all of the time.  Eternity is not something that happens then.  Eternity is happening now.  We can experience eternal moments if we have wide-open eyes and ears and hearts that are ready to be overwhelmed by God's kairos way of doing things.  

The prophet Isaiah speaks the words of God right into this way of living, trusting and believing:  

“I don’t think the way you think.
    The way you work isn’t the way I work.”
        God’s Decree.
“For as the sky soars high above earth,
    so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
    and the way I think is beyond the way you think." - Isaiah 55:8-9

May you spend the day today ready to feel and experience the eternal moments of grace and peace that transcend time and leave you feeling full of the glory of God and the joy of your salvation.  May you have eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart ready for transformation from chronos thinking to kairos living.  

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.