We don’t know how to wait! Everything in our techno-culture is screaming towards efficiency. Saving time is one of the basic criteria in new product development. Cell phones help us use “down time” productively. Internet innovations promise more features that help us be more efficient with time. I am shopping for a pressure cooker which promises to cook food quickly.
There are two kinds of time. Chronos is the ticking of the clock; sequential time. Many of today’s products actually do save us chronos. But there is also Kairos which signifies "a time in between", a moment of undetermined period of time in which "something" special happens. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature. We could say that kairos is God’s time. I’m not sure that modern technology is helping us to save “kairos” time. So what are we to do with Advent? It is a time to wait, a time to prepare. I would ask that we all DO something to help us nurture kairos time. Maybe it is to sit down each day with the Advent devotional and our Bibles. Maybe we will want to volunteer serving meals at Bean’s Café. Perhaps we will be able to put more kairos into our Christmas, toning down the spending, and giving alternative gifts.
This is a request that each of us get in touch with the power of waiting. In doing so may we each discover our God in the midst of kairos moments.
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