Time and Eternity

The Teacher wrote that “for everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” (Eccl 3.1). Christian preachers are fond of reminding their congregations about the difference between two Greek concepts of time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is used for the daily passing of routine or “ordinary” time. Kairos marks a special time pregnant with new beginnings or somehow opportune or fortunate—something promising a change for the better.

Time is a strange phenomenon. When we’re little, it seems to pass so slowly, and each new day is eventful because we’re constantly having “first” experiences: the first snowstorm, the first time at the circus, the first day of school, the first bout of the flu. By the time we’ve seen our fortieth snowstorm, what was once completely enchanting becomes routine—even resented, as we head out the door to shovel the walk again. But the truth is that the fortieth snowstorm really is just as enchanting as the first was. And the very same snowstorm we may resent will be some new person’s enchanting first snowstorm.

Though time can dull the senses, it can also heighten them. A particular experience shared with a loved one in the past, when it returns again in the cycle of the seasons, may strike us differently—perhaps more poignantly, or painfully, or gratefully—because of that past. I haven’t lived long enough to find out about all the tricks time can play on us. I expect there are more to learn.

But I know there are key moments of decision in every person’s life—call them kairos moments, if you wish: moments when a choice is made that bears consequences that cannot be undone, whether for good or ill. Sometimes we are aware of such momentous choices as we are making them; sometimes not. Sometimes the full force of our decision comes home to rest only years or even decades after we make it.

Of course, our choices affect not only us, the “decider”, but countless others as well. Unintended consequences are a regular occurrence—they may be unintended; they are not unforeseeable. Sometimes the effects of choices can snowball. One thing leads to another and pretty soon something much bigger than anyone could have imagined is unleashed. The stone that sets the ripples in motion is often hidden from view; all we see are the outer waves magnifying the initial force.

Good can be magnified by time just as well as evil. The build-up of good choices by one person over time or by generations of people in one place can make a huge difference in the quality of human life and character. The Berlin Wall didn’t come down by the actions of any one person alone, and it didn’t happen overnight. Yet real people made real choices that eventually led to its collapse.

The thing is, such mass movements seem to require some way of coordinating kairos moments—something like a collective kairos. It isn’t propitious just for one person, family, or clan. But how do those individual kairos moments coincide? How does the opportunity for a collective kairos arise? In ordinary interpersonal relationships, it often happens that timing that’s good for one person isn’t good for another. My desires don’t always match the desires of my friends and vice versa.

St Augustine taught that time is created by God along with creation. There is no time in eternity. If time is created, maybe that explains how time can sometimes be a problem in this life: Like the rest of creation, it’s imperfect and fallen. There’s not enough time for some; too much for others. People complain about bad pacing or quality of time and about time wasted: Time that should have been filled with one thing is filled instead with another.

If there really is a season for everything, perhaps the season for some things arrives only in heaven, for only there will we no longer be plagued by the vagaries of time. Only there can we rest secure in a love that knows no bounds, no limits, no exhaustion. Only there can we rest fully satisfied, knowing there is no danger of wasting time or running out of it.