From time to time, preachers like to remind their congregations that there are two words for “time” in the Greek New Testament. (It’s one way for us to flaunt our education.) We remind everyone that these two words are chronos, which gives us chronological time (like 4:05 p.m. as I write), and kairos, which reflects significant or monumental time. Depending on your generation, kairos time could be D-Day, the assassination of JFK, the Challenger space shuttle explosion, or 9/11.
In the passage above, Jesus begins His ministry by letting people know “what time it is.” The word He uses is kairos. The ministry of Jesus inaugurated something new, something significant, something that made time stand still, or maybe just feel that way.
I look back to the day when I stopped asking Jesus to come into my life and trusted that He had done so. It was around 1:45 in the afternoon (chronos time). But in retrospect, it was a timeless moment (kairos). Becoming engaged to Lib and then married, ordained, accepting calls to churches, the birth of children—and now a grandchild—are all personal kairos moments.
Sometimes I think that every moment when I stop and consider the grand work of God in my life is indeed a kairos moment.