Advent Time

If you’ve been anywhere near a church in the season of Advent, you have most likely have heard that, “’Advent’ means ‘coming.’” Advent traditionally begins the fourth Sunday before Christmas and is supposed to be a chance for us to prepare ourselves for the celebration of the coming of Christ into the world as well as Christ’s future second coming. But for me, to simply define Advent as ‘coming’ lacks the power to get me out of the consumeristic whirlwind already underway at Hallmark, Starbucks and the Galleria.

More simply Advent is the time that separates us from when we mark our awareness of Christmas’ coming and the actual event. Time is the operative word, for our modern sensibilities seem to have but one mode for time, now. Whether it’s our desires, our goals, our relationships or even our latte order, we want it now. And if not now, at least as quickly as possible. The mere existence of FedEx points to our obsessive desire to shrink the span between the time our need is realized to the time it is filled.

The Greeks, obsessive about their use of language, had two different words for time. The first, ‘kronos,’ referred to human, measurable time. Our modern minds deal almost exclusively in the realm of kronos. How long does it take? How many days till Christmas? And how can I get my package there faster? Kronos time.

But the Greeks described another kind of time, ‘kairos.’ Kairos time means the fullness or the ripeness of time. We talk about time that way when we say something’s “time has come.” Kairos time is God’s time. Kairos time is not time that we measure. Kairos time is not something we can shrink or stretch. Kairos time is time in which we patiently watch and wait. Kairos time is when we work steadily in the fields, preparing for the harvest that will come only on its schedule, not ours.

Advent is not lived in kronos time. Advent should not be about counting down the days, or trying to control whether the time goes slowly or quickly.

Advent is kairos time. In Advent’s kairos time, we too patiently watch and wait. We work steadily, anticipating, not controlling, the harvest. Only if we live Advent in kairos time will we receive God’s Christmas gift, ripened to perfection.