Awakening to Divine Presence: Part 1

Earthly Time Intersected

The month of April is often referred to as the season of new life. It has been four full months since we celebrated Christmas in the cold of the winter season & now according to our calendars, we have officially stepped into the season we call Spring. The snow has melted, the birds have returned & are busy making their nests, flowers are poking up through the ground & the buds on the trees are beginning to bring forth new leaves. Things that appeared to have died in the cold of winter are now coming to new life once again. As creation responds to the changing seasons, the various religious faith traditions celebrate the gifts of our Creator God in a variety of ways. Every year in the Christmas season of winter, Christians celebrate the “Holy Incarnation”, the birth of Jesus. And now, four months later, in this Spring season of new life Christians celebrate the “Holy Resurrection”, when Jesus overcame death. Both the Incarnation & the Resurrection are celebrations that break into our regular chronological time routines & offer opportunities to pause in faith, as we celebrate the magnitude of God’s Divine presence with us in life & in death & beyond. From the beginning of time, it seems that humans have measured their life in terms of time, be it through months & years on our calendars, past-present, hours, minutes & seconds, or even timers & alarms to help us keep our scheduled lives in order in some way. Did you ever stop to think about what life would be like outside of the boundaries of time, no past, no future, no clocks, no calendars! Just the present moment? In some ways the answer to that question defies comprehension. So integral is the concept of time to our sense of who we are, that we can hardly think outside that box. It does seem that the vast majority of our time is spent living our lives in some sort of chronological order, doing one thing after another & moving on. Sounds a little empty when you think about it doesn’t it? Yet, we all know that there are occasional times in our lives when things happen or come to our awareness & we just seem to lose all track of time & at those times it seems as if time stands still, doesn’t it? The Biblical Greek language used in the Holy Bible, has two different words for time. The two words are Chronos (as in chronology) which is linear time, & Kairos (represented by a vertical line) which is God’s time. There are moments & times throughout our lives when God’s time intersects with our chronological time & it is at those moments when all time stands still. Those moments are referred as Kairos moments. In those Kairos moments we are invited to stand together in Divine union with our Holy God who transcends all earthly experiences & pulls us outside of the limitations of earthly life. Kairos moments are the defining moments in our lives, the moments of new insight, of deeper understanding, moments when everything changes.

Some of those Kairos moments are recorded in the broader scope of history in sacred texts like the Bible, such as the Incarnation at Christmas & the Resurrection at Easter. As told in the scriptures at the time of the birth of the Incarnate Christ, the shepherds’ chronological time was intersected by God’s time. In those holy Kairos moments, they were pulled outside of all earthly distractions, concerns, pressures, & deadlines & drawn into the depths of the life changing glory of God’s mysteries. As they looked upon the holy child, they recognized that they were standing in the Divine presence of God & they were able to see the big picture of the divine purpose of God unfolding & their faith, hope, & joy were born anew in the light of God’s all-encompassing love. In a similar way on that first Easter morning as told in the scripture, as Mary, heavily ladened with grief over the suffering & death of Jesus made her way to the tomb, her troubled Chronos earthly time was intersected by God’s time. As she saw the empty tomb & heard her Lord’s voice call her by name, she came to realize that Jesus had overcome death & was alive. In those Kairos moments with God, all time stood still as God pulled her into His Divine presence filling her life with deep faith, hope, & overflowing joy as her eyes & heart were opened to see the magnitude of God’s holy gift of eternal life. 

~Posted by Rev Kathryn Bindig, MDiv. MS; Pastoral Care Minister with assistance from Rich Muscatello; Director of Business Development & Strategy