From Jerry Sittser and his book, “The Will of God as a Way of Life” and following a previous post ‘Why Make the Game So Hard’:
Making the Most of the Time
We could multiply these examples. God would be delighted to help people like them (and us!), not by delivering them from the consequences of their foolish decisions but by enabling them to endure and mature through them. Had they turned to God they would have found themselves in the center of his will and he would have given them grace to handle failure, divorce, loss of job, or the like. Although all we can see is our failures, God views our circumstances from a larger frame of reference and wants to accomplish some greater purpose in them, in spite of our bad choices.
The will of God consists, in other words, of a life lived for God right where we are. It is not a set of ideal circumstances we imagine for ourselves. It is the godly course we set for our lives in the circumstances we face. We can start at any time. Once we turn to him, we receive grace and find ourselves in the center of his will, even if nothing in our current situation changes. He puts us on the course to the Celestial City and gives us the grace to do his will on the way to that destination.
The apostle Paul understood the urgency of discipleship when he told the church in Ephesus “to make the most of the time because the days are evil.”6 “Making the most of time” does not imply that we should live a frenzied and frantic life. Piety does not require us to live in a state of panic, as if trying to escape a forest fire. We should make the most of time according to the biblical definition of time.
There are two words for time in the Greek language—chronos and kairos. Chronos has to do with clocks, calendars, schedules, agendas, and pressure. The clock ticks, the hours pass, and deadlines loom. Chronos requires us to get as much done as we possibly can. It demands efficiency, productivity, and punctuality. Kairos, by contrast, has to do with important events, the significance of daily experience, and the wonder of the present moment. It is transcendent reality invading earthly reality, eternity revealing itself in time, the extraordinary manifesting itself in the ordinary. We exist in chronos; we long for kairos. Chronos requires speed so life is not wasted; kairos requires patience so that life can be enjoyed. Chronos drives us forward to get things done; kairos allows us to relish the opportunity to do them. We perform in chronos, but we truly live in kairos.~Jerry Sittser, The Will of God as a Way of Life (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), 149-150
Continued. . .
