The modern myth in family relationships is that quality time is more
important than quantity time. Parents
who don’t spend an adequate amount of time with their children often think they
can make up for it by taking their kids to amusement parks and sporting
events. While quality time is important,
the reality is that quality time is what happens when you spend a quantity of
time together. No amount of quality time
can replace the day-to-day conversations that take place over the dinner table,
while taking walks, or helping the kids with their homework. When you do those mundane things, suddenly an
unplanned quality moment has passed, without you having to contrive it.
The same can be
said about developing your relationship with God. No one can expect to pray once a month and
have a great connection to God. Quality
experiences of God through prayer only happen when you regularly engage in a
quantity of time you spend in the Lord’s presence. You may go through seasons where your prayer
is mundane and routine. Your quiet time
with Jesus isn’t always ecstatic. But
without regular prayer times, there won’t be the irregular and extraordinary
conversations with God that change who you are at the core of your being. Every now and then God will grace you with a
word of encouragement, an illumination of scripture, a fresh insight into one
of life’s problems. But you can’t make
it happen. These times only come when
you allow God to move, by availing yourself of regular time spent with Him.
In A Cry for Mercy, Henri J.M. Nouwen says:
I call to you, O Lord, from my quiet darkness. Show me your mercy and love. Let me see your face, hear your voice, touch
the hem of your cloak. I want to love
you, be with you, speak to you and simply stand in your presence. But I cannot make it happen. Pressing my eyes against my hands is not
praying, and reading about your presence is not living it.
But there is that moment in
which you will come to me, as you did to your fearful disciples, and say, “Do
not be afraid, it is I.” Let that moment
come soon, O Lord. And if you want to
delay it, then make me patient. Amen.
When you engage in a daily quiet time with Jesus, you have to remember
that time works differently for God than it does for you. You experience one moment at a time, while
God stands outside of time’s constraints.
You may have heard about the poor man who asked the Lord, “God, what is
a million years to you?” God answered,
“My son, a million years to you is but a second to me.” Then the man asked, “God, what is a million
dollars to you?” God responded, “My son,
a million dollars to you is only a penny to me.” The man said, “So God, can I have a million
dollars?" And God s aid, "In a
second." So time works differently
for God than it does for us—both in terms of duration and quality.
2 Peter 3:8 says, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With
the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a
day.” C.S. Lewis says, “If you picture Time as a straight line
along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on
which the line is drawn.”[i] So while you live in the present and have the
ability to remember the past and anticipate the future, God stands back and
sees all three aspects of time at once.
God saw the beginning, middle, and end of your life before the world
began. Ephesians 1:4 says, “For
he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in
his sight.” 1 Peter 1:20 says, “He was chosen before the creation of the
world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.”
Before the world began, God the Father knew you, and He knew His Son
Jesus. He planned for the two of you to
have a living encounter—and you can have that encounter today—in this moment of
time.
The New Testament uses two
different words to describe the one word that we have in English: “Time.”Chronos
is the Greek word that means chronological time—the kind that can be
measured on a chronometer (clock). Chronos
is measured in seconds, minutes, and hours.
Chronos has to do with the earth’s rotation and its revolution
around the sun. Recently, I
visited a dear young woman who is an inmate at a local jail. Her time is almost up, and she told me that
she’s counting the days. “Twenty more
days and I go home,” she said, delight and anticipation written across her
face. “I can’t wait. Time seems to go so slowly now that my days
here are short.” She’s measuring Chronos time, and can’t wait until it passes.
Time is a strange thing. Sometimes it seems fast and sometimes it
seems to pass so slowly. Kairos is the Greek word that means
special time or sacred time—like when you can look at your sweetheart of fifty
years and say, “It seems like only yesterday since the day we got
married.” Or like when you’re having
your quiet time with the Lord and suddenly you look at your watch and a couple
of hours has gone by without you noticing it, because the time has been so
sweet. That was Kairos time. The Greek word
literally means “in the fullness of time,” or “the right or opportune
moment.”
The trick is learning how to turn Chronos
into Kairos. God stands outside of time, creating sacred
moments as we need them. How can we make
all of our days sacred days? By
realizing that we dwell in the fullness of time. All of history has worked together to produce
this moment and no other moment. This minute,
this second in which you live, is the product of God’s plan down through the
ages. And you have the opportunity to
live in it. Realizing your place within
God’s divine plan, and grasping the sacred now
brings the past, present, and future into this moment that you get to spend
with God. Then, you can truly say with
the psalmist, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all
generations. Before the mountains were
born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to
everlasting you are God…For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that
has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.”[ii] You convert Chronos into Kairos every
time you grasp the eternal now.
In The Eternal Now, theologian
Paul Tillich says,
Praying means elevating oneself to the eternal. In fact, there is no
other way of judging time than to see it in the light of the eternal. In order
to judge something, one must be partly within it, partly out of it. If we were
totally within time, we would not be able to elevate ourselves in prayer,
meditation and thought, to the eternal. We would be children of time like all
other creatures and could not ask the question of the meaning of time. But as
men we are aware of the eternal to which we belong and from which we are
estranged by the bondage of time…
The mystery of the future and the mystery of the past are united in the
mystery of the present. Our time, the time we have, is the time in which we
have "presence." But how can we have "presence"? Is not the
present moment gone when we think of it? Is not the present the ever-moving
boundary line between past and future? But a moving boundary is not a place to
stand upon. If nothing were given to us except the "no more" of the
past and the "not yet" of the future, we would not have anything. We
could not speak of the time that is our time; we would not have
"presence."
The mystery is that we have a present; and even more, that we have
our future also because we anticipate it in ‘the present; and that we
have our past also, because we remember it in the present. In the
present our future and our past are ours. But there is no
"present" if we think of the never-ending flux of time. The riddle of
the present is the deepest of all the riddles of time. Again, there is no
answer except from that which comprises all time and lies beyond it -- the
eternal. Whenever we say "now" or "today," we stop the flux
of time for us. We accept the present and do not care that it is gone in the
moment that we accept it. We live in it and it is renewed for us in every new
present." This is possible because every moment of time reaches into the eternal.
It is the eternal that stops the flux of time for us. It is the eternal
"now" which provides for us a temporal "now." We live so
long as "it is still today" -- in the words of the letter to the
Hebrews. Not everybody, and nobody all the time, is aware of this "eternal
now" in the temporal "now." But sometimes it breaks powerfully
into our consciousness and gives us the certainty of the eternal, of a
dimension of time which cuts into time and gives us our time.
People who are never aware of this dimension lose the possibility of
resting in the present. As the letter to the Hebrews describes it, they never
enter into the divine rest. They are held by the past and cannot separate
themselves from it, or they escape towards the future, unable to rest in the
present. They have not entered the eternal rest which stops the flux of time
and gives us the blessing of the present. Perhaps this is the most conspicuous
characteristic of our period, especially in the western world and particularly
in this country. It lacks the courage to accept "presence" because it
has lost the dimension of the eternal.
"I am the beginning and the end." This is said to us who live
in the bondage of time, who have to face the end, who cannot escape the past,
who need a present to stand upon. Each of the modes of time has its peculiar
mystery, each of them carries its peculiar anxiety. Each of them drives us to
an ultimate question. There is one answer to these questions -- the
eternal. There is one power that surpasses the all-consuming power of
time -- the eternal: He Who was and is and is to come, the beginning and the
end. He gives us forgiveness for what has passed. He gives us courage for what
is to come. He gives us rest in His eternal Presence.[iii]
Psalm
90:12 says, “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” My dear incarcerated friend has certainly
learned to number her days, and that has given her a heart of wisdom. By recalling her past experiences in the
light of the present, she knows how all the events of her history have led up
to her present imprisonment. By
experiencing the future in the present, she realizes how precious her days are,
and how important each decision is. She
doesn’t take time for granted. She lives
in the eternal present. She gives God
her presence.
When we take time for granted,
we don’t carve out sacred moments, but live as natural creatures rather than
the supernatural beings that God created His children to be. When you realize your limited time on the
earth, then suddenly each day becomes special.
You’ll schedule some Chronos and convert it into Kairos
every time you get an opportunity, and you’ll begin to live for God rather than
for yourself. Rather than letting
Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God become an excuse for
not having a true quiet time with Jesus, you’ll take the old monk’s advice as
he intended it. You’ll become anxious to
do as Mary did—to sit at Jesus’ feet right now in the present. You’ll want to give your presence to
Him who is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One who invites
you into the eternal now.
