Preparation

A thoughtful discussion of time and Advent by Jill Carratini at RZIM.

To the English reader, chronos and kairos both appear to us as “time.” But in Greek, these words are vastly different. Chronos is the time on your wrist watch, time on the move, passing from present to future and so becoming past. Kairos, on the other hand, is qualitative rather than quantitative. It is time as a moment, a significant occasion, an immeasurable quality. In the New Testament, kairos is God’s time, it is real time--it is the eternal now.

Whether we are ready for our calendars to announce the arrival of Christmas, Christ will come. He comes quietly and unexpectedly; he comes and upsets our very notion of time and all we discover within it. The eternal Word steps into flesh, into our bounded realm of time, and literally embodies the reality that time is meaningful because of the eternal one in our midst.