What Time Is It?

Happy New Year! This month of January is named after Janus, the Roman god of transitions, new beginnings, gateways, passages, and time. Janus is usually depicted as having two faces (see illustration on left), one looking backward to past time and one looking forward to future time. As we begin this new year, we often do that very thing: look back at the old year while looking ahead to the new year stretching out before us.

What time is it?  Anyone will tell you that come January 1, we enter into a new year, as well as a new decade.  With the new year of 2020, this puts us two decades into the new century and millennium. What time is it?  We live in a world ordered by space and time, and we are especially conscious of that as we enter into the new year.  But our reckoning of time is quite different from how God reckons time.  Especially now, we are conscious that in the midst of our world of hours, days, months, and years, our God is eternal and timeless.

We human beings order life according to what the Greek language calls chronos, that is the sequential, day-in day-out system of time. From this Greek word, we get our own word “chronological” – a linear approach to life that is familiar to all of us.  But God reckons time quite differently; not by chronos, but by kairos.  This kairos thing is a new time zone, and it literally means God’s timing.  Paul the apostle writes concerning this:  “In the fullness of time (kairos), God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).  God’s timing does not depend on hours, days, months or years, but when everything is ready for God’s purpose. And ultimately, as Paul says elsewhere in the New Testament, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  God’s loving purpose dictates God’s timing, which may or may not coincide with our own sense of timing.  At times, this is difficult to understand, particularly when something does not take place according to the time-table we have worked out in our own minds.

At the dawning of this new year and new decade, it is important to remember this: God has broken into our chronos world with the birth of his Son, Jesus.  The incarnate Son of God is transforming our world and our lives into a new time zone – God’s time, kairos.  Although we still live in a chronos world marked by deadlines and due dates, as Christ’s people we recognize that there is another sense of time – kairos time – that is much grander and expansive than anything our little minds can comprehend.  This kairos time is that time which guides and directs our lives, and that from God alone.

What time is it?  It is time to greet the new year and the new decade with a spirit of hopeful joy, for we know that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). No matter what the days and months of this new year may hold, by faith we say with the psalmist: “My times are in your hand, O Lord” (Psalm 31:15). May this new year be one of grace and blessing from the Lord’s hand for you.