Time

 October 17, 2024

Time is important in the book of Daniel. Daniel’s story begins with king Nebuchadnezzar’s troubling dream. His astrologers and advisors couldn’t figure out it’s meaning, prompting the king to respond, 

“I know what you are doing! You’re stalling for time because you know I am serious when I say, ‘If you don’t tell me the dream, you are doomed.’ So you have conspired to tell me lies, hoping I will change my mind. But tell me the dream, and then I’ll know that you can tell me what it means.”” —Daniel 2:8-9 

Later on in Daniel, we read his prophecy of “time, times, and half a time” (7:25), which figures into many of the prophecies of the End Times.

The older I get, the more important time is to me. I know—you’re all chuckling because of the “not as many breaths as before” blooper. But hear me out. In the New Testament there are two different words for time. I’ll give you two verses that illustrate this.

“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,” —Galatians 4:4 

“For He says: “In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” —II Corinthians 6:2 

In Galatians, the word Paul uses for time is chronos, from which we get the word chronological. It is time as it marches on day after day. In 2 Corinthians, the word is kairos, which means the opportune time, like when we would say “Now’s the right time,” like the when I asked Linda to marry me. That was a kairos moment!

We’re all getting older. That’s chronological time. It marches on at the same pace for all of us. It is our daily reality. But it’s the other kind of time that’s really important—those moments that come perhaps once in a lifetime, those crossroads of decision that can change everything for the good or bad, those “kairos” times. Paul said it best in 2 Corinthians: “Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.” God is calling you to himself. Don’t put him off. Chronos time keeps going; Kairos moments are here and gone. What is God’s kairos moment for you?