Ordinary Time Interrupted
How kairos time pauses our ordinary chronos time for God to meet with us
Hi, Friends,
I’m so glad to introduce to you my friend-from-church Linda Harper. Three years ago when my family and I were still testing the waters at our now-church, I met Linda at a little gathering of writers and creatives. She welcomed me, she was curious about me—a fledgling spiritual director in training—and she encouraged me to put my writing and photography to use for God’s kingdom. I’m so glad to have her sharing her writing this week! I pray that you’ll be encouraged by her reflection on how God interrupts our ordinary days with his kairos moments.
🧡 - Sarah
Summer started late for me this year. Flower pots on my patio remained empty till early June, almost too late to bother. But bother I did! A once-upon-a-time gardener who had in a previous life over-landscaped her back yard couldn’t dare miss a summer without at least a couple of blooming green things. One morning as I sat on my patio having breakfast with Jesus (my newest spiritual discipline) I noticed that one pot was not blooming while the other was wildly colorful with blooms. I grabbed my phone and took the pictures you see below. The pot pictured on the left had been placed, by me, in the shade; the one on the right lived in the sunshine.
One Missed Morning Leads to Another
The loss of blossoms happened gradually, but the recognition of the loss was sudden. So it is with the spiritual life. We miss one morning of quiet contemplation, an evening without examen, an added social engagement. One missed morning or evening becomes two, then three, then an entire week, and suddenly we find ourselves depleted. Bloomless.
Years ago, as my life was falling apart, I had a dream. I was standing in the flower-filled median of the northwest corner of the intersection of Sunshine (!) and Glenstone, one of the busiest of my city. As traffic whizzed past me from all directions, I heard a voice say (remember, it’s a dream), “It only takes a seed, soil, and water to create this, but without sunshine nothing will bloom.”
This dream came back to me simultaneously with the realization that my once-beautifully flowering plant was not getting the sun it needed. It only took a moment for me to understand that both the dream and the remembrance of the dream were kairos moments. God broke through chronos time to teach me. Chronos time counts hours; kairos is God’s appointed time in which he reveals himself to us. As I sat at breakfast with Jesus, kairos time invaded chronos time.
How do I intentionally live in Presence and welcome these kairos moments? Silence and solitude provide the sunshine of my spiritual life. I am deeply rooted in the Word, I’ve allowed my “seed” to fall to the ground, and I am watered by deep spiritual friendships and mentors. But without sitting in the sunshine of quiet and stillness there is no flowering. It’s in this practice that kairos (eternity) time can crash into chronos (ordinary clock) time.
It’s fascinating to me that there are two ways to think of ordinary time. It can be taken to mean time kept by the clock or it can mean time counted ordinally, by weeks or months, in the liturgical calendar. As the calendar goes, most of ordinary time occurs in the summer and fall months. John Kyler says, “The richness of Ordinary Time [liturgically] is found in the opportunity to know Christ more intimately in the everyday realities of life.”
Summertime Solitude
I’ve discovered that my summertime solitude practice differs from that of colder months in which the rest of the liturgical calendar falls. When possible, my ordinary time practices take me outdoors, even in the extreme heat we’re experiencing in the Midwest this year. God’s creation speaks clearly to me of his love. I see…
The morning glory vine creeping onto my little bistro table, wrapping itself around the wrought iron and I think, “His mercies are new every morning.
The large birds of prey catching a thermal high in the sky and soaring with ease and I think, “they that wait upon the Lord…shall mount up as eagles.”
A robin perched on the tip-top branch of a tree, barely balanced on a leaf, and I know, “His eye is on the sparrow.”
A squirrel friend scrambling down the fence that separates my neighbor’s garden from my yard, then returning to munch on a stolen tomato, and I think, “He prepares a table for me.”
A honeybee sucking the nectar from my purple morning glory trumpets, and I know that “My God will supply all my needs according to his riches in glory.”
Breakfast With Jesus
These scenes are witnessed at one time or another as I have breakfast with Jesus. Sometime last winter as I reread the story of Jesus preparing breakfast on the beach for his disciples after his resurrection (John 21:12-15) it occurred to me to begin intentionally having breakfast with Jesus.
No matter how busy the day before me might be, no matter how early I might need to leave my home for an appointment, most days began with breakfast. There’s something intimate about sitting at a table and sharing a meal with anyone, but especially al fresco with Jesus. Silent! Intentional! Surrounded by the beauty of nature.
As with Peter, it’s a time for Jesus to ask penetrating questions. A time for instruction from him. He told Peter, “Feed my sheep.” How might his penetrating questions heal you? What might he invite you into?
Breakfast occurs in chronos time; breakfast with Jesus allows us to enter kairos time. It’s a time to place myself in the light of the Son so that I can bloom.
“In the Garden”
by Lilias Trotter
The daisies have been talking today. I see the reason why they spread out their leaves flat on the ground. It is to hold back from the flowers the blades of grass that would shut out the sunlight. They speak of the need of deliberately holding back everything that would crowd our souls and stifle God’s light and air. In the life of Jesus there were many times of pressure but they only forced him back upon God, as on the day when the crowds followed him to the desert and he went up to the mountain to drink in, through the long-delayed stillness, such a fresh draught of life as carried him over the rough sea before dawn.
Linda Harper is mother/stepmother to four boys, grandmother to four young adults, and great-grandmother to 6 beautiful children ranging in age from two to fifteen years. They are the moons orbiting the sun of her life. Linda has published three novels, The Roslyn Trilogy (available on Amazon in all formats) written for the purpose of helping people relinquish the unholy trinity of shame, fear, and guilt and open to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Linda lives with her best friend and husband, Phillip, in Ozark, Missouri.