But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to be lost, but all to come to repentance. – 2 Peter 3:8-9

One of the curious corollaries to getting older is the increased speed of time. This is truth both mathematically and in terms of perception.

I have long understood that time is something other than the constant, predictable, linear progression of fixed intervals we imagine. Its movement – and measurement – is subject to many variables, from the speed of the Earth’s rotation to our sometimes wobbly progress around the Sun (which itself is literally zooming around our corner of the Universe as part of the Milky Way) to what is happening in a given moment to my consciousness or awareness or distraction or state of mind and more.

My sense of time today is very much that one week or month or year in 2024 is now such a small fraction of my sixty-eight years that it is almost impossible to mark before it is gone. This “new” house, for example, will be completed and we will be moving in “no time at all!”

Time slows down when we are waiting, or bored, or in difficulty, or impatient for something to happen; and then – like seeing our grandchildren – the moment is done and in the rearview mirror in a heartbeat.

Progress on our house then – sometimes visible and at others involving details we cannot see – continues to move forward, but not at the constant, predictable, linear progression of fixed intervals we imagine. Some of what appears slow is in actuality exactly what we want, like tearing out rot that would not have been visible to anyone in too much of a hurry.

Which brings me to the “take-away” from this post. We live on two (at least) timelines. One is the Greek word chronos, defined as the measure of quantitative time or an exact time. The other is kairos, nicely defined at Dictionary.com: “‘The right time’ from Ancient Greek, kairos refers to an ‘opportune presentation’ in rhetoric and a ‘spiritual opportunity’ in Christian theology.”

I like the following from the late Tim Kight:

Where chronos is quantitative, kairos is qualitative. Chronos is about minutes; kairos is about moments.

Tim Kight: Acalltoexcellence.com

Also undergirding this post, I suspect, is the fact that a very dear friend is currently dealing with a devastating medical diagnosis. At this writing her chronos is an unknown quantity; but her kairos time cannot be measured, only experienced, and it is there that our love for her, her journey as a Child of God and her remarkable spirit know nothing but confidence and, we pray with all our strength, peace.

In love, and because love is timeless – DEREK