Kairos Moments

I thought of calling this post “the ambiguity of time”, but what I really want to notice is the rich opportunity that every moment of life brings.

In Greek mythology, Chronos was ‘Father Time’, the personification of time in minutes, hours, days and years. But the wise Greeks also recognized that within the flow of time some moments are more momentous than others. There is a timeliness to things.

So they used a different word, ‘kairos’, to describe the right moment for something. Aristotle identified the point in an argument when the proof should be presented as the ‘kairos’ moment. Chronos is the quantity of time; kairos is the quality of time – time pregnant with purpose.

Eastern Hospitality

Centuries before the magi visited Bethlehem bringing exquisite gifts fit for a king, a desert sheik spotted three strangers lingering a short distance from his tents. With the vigor characteristic of middle-eastern hospitality, he hurried over to them and offered them a quick drink of water.

In the conventions of hospitality, you make the initial offer so small that to refuse would be an insult. Then,

In Praise of Amniotic Fluid

The amazing gift of water completely surrounds us long before we draw our first breath. And the wonder of it all dazzled me afresh each time I watched one of my children being born!

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body

and knit me together in my mother’s womb.

You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,

as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

Psalm 139:13-15 NLT

When my wife was in labor with our first daughter, her nurse, who was also a friend and a seasoned midwife, whispered to her after several fruitless hours of labor, ‘I’m going to break your water, that will get things moving.’

Desert, Torrent and Sea

Woven throughout the puzzling images of the Book of Revelation are the twin themes of victory and suffering.

Half-way through the book, in Chapter 12, John sees ‘a great and wondrous sign’ that illustrates this double truth.

A pregnant woman is on the verge of giving birth, but a fierce red dragon stands in front of her ready to pounce on her infant the moment she delivers. It’s a bizarre picture to be sure, but it's a symbolic portrait of the cosmic battle under-lying the history of the human race.

The woman is a composite of Eve, the mother of all living (who was stalked by the serpent) and Mary, the mother of Jesus, stalked by Herod after Jesus was born. The new-born boy-child, we’re told, “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” So we know this is about the reign of Jesus and the hostility of the evil one who seeks to destroy him. The child is no sooner born than he is “snatched up to God and to his throne” (v.5). The story leaps from the birth of Jesus to his ascension to heaven.

New Birth

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the most water-drenched of all C. S. Lewis’ Narnia stories. 
It tells about an obnoxious young boy named Eustace who took refuge from a rain-storm in a cave that turned out to be a dragon’s lair.  In the dim light of the cave he discovered hoards of gold and silver and jewelry. He filled his pockets and slipped a magnificent bracelet on his arm – and then fell asleep.

When he awoke, his arm throbbed because it had grown larger overnight and was covered with reptilian scales. Having fallen asleep “with greedy dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”

Journey of the Magi

Whether you’re traveling this Christmas or staying home, I wish you the joy and wonder of
“a running stream and a water-mill.”

Let me explain. In his poem “The Journey of the Magi” T. S. Eliot describes the difficult journey of the Magi across the deserts of Arabia on their way to Bethlehem:
"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year . . .
The very dead of winter."

The camels were uncooperative, he says, lying down in the melting snow, the night-fires continually going out, the towns unfriendly and dirty, charging high prices, and always the voices of derision, mocking their journey. Until . . .

Through Water to New Life

An un-named infant floats precariously in a papyrus basket among the reeds along the Nile, condemned by imperial edict, guilty of being a 3-month-old Hebrew man-child. Miraculously, he’s rescued by an Egyptian princess who names him Moses meaning ‘water-son’ or ‘drawn out of water’.

The Finding of Moses,  Edwin Long, 1886

He will grow up to become liberator of the Hebrew slaves, but first he has to undergo his own rescue, his own exodus, experiencing on a personal scale the rescue-through-water* which God would later accomplish through him for the whole nation at the Red Sea.

Many commentators note the courageous women who are heroines of this story: the Egyptian midwives who defy the Pharaoh’s edict, the mother and sister of Moses who risk their lives to protect him, the daughter of Pharaoh who finances his day-care and gives him his name. They lived in a patriarchal world, but it's impossible to ignore the vital role these women played.