Working Through Time

Miriam Moser

During matins one morning, one of the fellows prayed that God would “rush through Windrush [our house] like a wind” and that his spirit would bring unity to our group. I thought about that twice. How would that actually appear? I have heard the terminology of the “spirit rushing through like a wind” many times. My entire Pentecostal heritage is based on the story of the upper room, a wind, tongues of fire and speaking in tongues. And so my idea of God being fully present always meant that everyone would be singing worship songs and praying and speaking in tongues every hour of the day and night. But this is obviously wrong. We must sleep sometime. If we spoke in tongues for the sixteen waking hours a day, our voices would go hoarse. Pity the fingers of the guitar-playing worship leader!

Christ may be the Bread of Life and the Living Water. He satisfies our eternal hunger and thirst. But this must be distinguished from our temporal hunger and thirst. Failure to distinguish the two can be fatal. A few keen medieval women took the metaphor literally, attempting to subsist on the Eucharist alone. They starved to death.

In the Greek language, two sorts of time are specified. Kairos is God’s time—the eternal, divine moment. Kronos is the time that we humans struggle through. And as we are moving in Kronos, no matter what our spiritual state, we still become hungry and thirsty. Food must be produced and water must be purified and clothes must be worn. For while our eternal responsibility is to God, because we commit to acknowledging Kairos, acknowledging the time in which he chooses to work, Kronos is imbued with meaning. And that gives us the weight of other responsibilities, responsibility to and for our families and communities.

Sunday is the day of rest. It is the time in which we recognize the existence of eternal rest. It is the period in which Kronos and Kairos intersect. But not every day can be Sunday. There is a reason God specified that it happened only once every seven days. An old fable is told about a lazy man who wished for a week of Sundays. The first Sunday was routine. The second Sunday was still nice. He attended church and the sermon was of passing interest. His wife gave him leftovers from the previous day. He quite enjoyed his leisure time. But by the third day his wife had nothing left to serve but broth, because all of the shops were closed and food could not be purchased. The priest’s message wasn’t very meaningful, because he had spent all of his energy writing sermons for the previous two days. The man had so much leisure that he became sick of his extra time. As the week progressed, matters only worsened. When the week came to an end, the man realized he now desired work.

God put Adam in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it (Gen 3:15). It was only after the Fall that his work became unpleasant. But it is not constantly unpleasant. We still have ways in which our work satisfies some spiritual need. When I am pursuing knowledge, I often experience the joy of discovery. Each bit of knowledge illuminates the created world. And every sort of work can illuminate the created world. For creation, even in its brokenness, reflects its creator. While creation cannot give us the full picture—that is why direct revelation is necessary—it is still a source of divine understanding.

Once we fully participate in Kairos, we may eternally cry “holy, holy, holy” with our voices. But we are still in Kronos and if our worship is to be constant, it must also flow through our work. Thus, if the Spirit of God were to rush through our house, it would not only manifest itself through musical worship or prayer. It would look like increased understanding in class, joy gained in work at the Lodge, and most excitingly (for me at least) the gifts of every individual would be used to glorify God. So my written work would communicate the joy of creation, and I would be joyful in the process. Whatever one was created to do, one would take joy in completing. And both the process and product would participate in the coming of the Kingdom of God.

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Sometimes, when we ought to be speaking of Kronos, we give answers that really apply to Kairos, and this can be detrimental to one’s own faith as well as the faith of others (which is, perhaps, even more unfortunate than the starvation of well-intentioned ascetics). Jesus himself is often unclear about which he is speaking, such as when he tells the woman at the well that she will thirst no more, when clearly, she will come to that well again. But Jesus was Jesus, and he knew when people needed overstatement. He knew when people needed to be told to gouge out their eyes to avoid lust. But we need to be careful with how we communicate the same precepts. Too often answers such as “God will provide” are given, when God may not choose to provide in the temporal realm. Sometimes he does, and we can petition in prayer. But sometimes he doesn’t. He has promised to work all things together for good, but this is an eternal good, not an earthly good. We live in the light of eternity. We anticipate it. It is almost but not yet. And we need to acknowledge the discomfort of ‘almost.’

Miriam graduated from Gordon College in 2007 with a degree in English. An excellent writer who shared some reflection on the book Gilead in her essay portion of the application, Miriam stated that, "More than anything, the book made me desire wisdom above all; it caused me to examine my choices and see what sort of character they were leading me towards, rather than what sort of career". At Gordon, she edited Colloquy, the student academic journal, and Idiom, the campus literary magazine and lived with 4 other students in Oxford, England for one year through an overseas Gordon College program.

0 Responses • Fellows, Fri 16 Nov 2007