What Kind of Time?

I just had a little piece of revelation today. I was pondering two kinds of time mentioned in the scriptures (there are at least three). With my Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words in hand, I did some digging. The more familiar usage to us is Chronos time, or the time that we refer to most often measured in seconds, minutes and hours. What we commonly call "a watch" that we wear on our wrist, used to be called "a chronometer". Read the fine print on the face of a Rolex watch and you will see the words, "superlative chronometer". But I digress. The second kind of time is Kairos time or what we refer to as seasons, ages or eras. Both are time, but counted differently.

God who is ageless and eternal is not subject to Chronos time. He isn't concerned with seconds, minutes and hours as we are. These things are very important to us as we only have a limited supply of them. God on the other hand has a limitless amount, so in reality they really don't apply to Him. We are very conscience of our Chronos time, less conscience of our Kairos time.

So, with this thought in mind, think of this verse of scripture:

2 Peter 3:8 (NKJV)
But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

It's all the same to Him. Being eternal, one in terms of Chronos time is as good as another. However, it doesn't work that way with Kairos time. Consider this verse of scripture:

1 Thes. 5:1 (KJV)
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.

Interesting that both "times" and "seasons" are the same word, Kairos. It is times and seasons that are most important to God. We might think of it as "at the right time."

This factors in a lot to us. While we are so wrapped up in Chronos time, we tend to think that God is late so often, that God delays unnecessarily. We want answers to prayer now, within minutes, hours or days. God moves in seasons. I know that seems terribly inconvenient to us who are dominated by the clock most of our lives, but God is who He is, I AM.

So if it seems God is constantly showing up late for your need, remember, it is times and seasons, not minutes and hours. Hard to accept, but I am thinking that is the way it is.

As a secondary side note to all of this, a further revelation occurred to me. Wives are a lot like God in this way, much more than husbands. Husbands are very bound to Chronos time. Wives are much more oriented to Kairos time, times and seasons, "when the time is right". So, when a husband asks his wife, "when will you be ready?" or when they drive up to the mall, "when will you be back?" she intuitively understands that we husbands do not relate to Kairos time and gives us Chronos time so we can have something we can understand. The wife will say, "I'll be ready in five minutes." Now she is not telling us an untruth, but since we wouldn't understand it if she said, "when the time is right", or "in season", the answer of 5 minutes conveys the message that she is not ready yet. Remember the day versus a thousand years?, yep, wives also think one is as good as another. Five minutes is as good as half an hour or more. 5 o'clock is as good as 7 o'clock. It is all within the same era or season.

Honestly, I dont' know how theologically sound all of this is, but it sure helps me understand some things better. I hope it helps you, dear reader as well.

What if....God

I have been pondering quite a bit lately about how some people can truly believe there is no God. I cannot conceive how any person who thinks (ah...maybe I've hit on something here) can embrace the idea that everything is a cosmic accident. Aside from theological arguement, which are valid and necessary, but just playing the "what if..." game leads one to see the utter impossibility of life being possible without God.

For instance, what if we just eliminate one thng from the world as we know it? What if there were no gravity? Now I know men and women live in space capsules without it, but think here and now, life would just not be possible. We coudn't drive, things would be a mess to say the least, and there would be no way we could raise children, make dinner or a million other things we take quite for granted that makes life possible. It sounds pretty silly, but really, rivers would cease to be rivers and rain would no longer fall and what would keep the oceans in their place? The more you ponder the problem, the less silly it becomes.

When one thinks of the perfect balance of everything that works together to support life, the complexity of it all leads one quickly to the conclusion, there has to be a God who put this all together so perfectly. An accident? Now that's silly.

Rev. 4:11 (NKJV)
"You are worthy, O Lord,
To receive glory and honor and power;
For You created all things,
And by Your will they exist and were created."

A Bear-ably Nice Day

It was getting on toward the end of summer and the "bite" was on for rainbow trout on the Kenai River. This is positively my favorite time of year on the Kenai Peninsula. I "had" to use my birthday present from the church of a guided fishing trip with Jimmie Jack Guide Service. David Drake was the guide on this spectacular day.

Guide - David Drake, We watched a brown bear eating some salmon early in the day (see the attached video link for a YouTube clip) and we caught a lot of fish, silver salmon, Dolly Varden, Whitefish, and my favorite, rainbow trout. There is something very special about Kenai River rainbow trout. They are (sometimes) huge, they are spectacularly colored and speckled and they leap and fight in and out of the water with a wild frenzy that is addictive to a fisherman. We had such a day. I was blessed to have caught a beautiful specimen near the end of the day, a perfect way to cap off a great experience.

The other aspect of this day that was exciting to watch was being in the boat while Dave, the guide, witnessed to the other client in the boat, a older gentleman named, Jerry. Jerry was pretty resistant to talk much about faith the whole day, but that did not stop or intimidate Dave! Every little bit, Dave would mention Jesus or thank the Lord when we caught a nice fish.

Jerry would not respond most of the time, but through the day, he was softening up. He talked about his religious upbringing and about all of the difficult things he experienced being a soldier in the Viet Nam war. Each time Dave would say something positive about what Jesus meant to him and gave assurance of God's love for Jerry. It was a marvelous thing to watch Dave mix his professional skills as a guide with his personal witness of Jesus. You could tell this was not a special put-on because the pastor was in the boat, but a lifestyle of witnessing about Jesus to everyone he meets.

At the end of the day, Dave was telling Jerry he hoped he could come back again next year to fish with him again. Jerry said that he would need God's help to do it as he is currently battling cancer and has been advised that he may not have that much time. Dave, pulled the boat up to a convenient bank and laid hands on Jerry and prayed for his healing and for Jesus to make Himself known to Jerry.

Wow, what a great day! the personal enjoyment of my favorite fishing and being on the front row of watching someone give a persistent and passionate witness of Jesus to someone who was obviously not used to talking about his faith. Way to go, Dave! Not only for a great day of fishing, but for touching someone with a witness of Jesus!

What Really Matters

I don't kow about you, but I like to think a lot when I am working with my hands. I think about a lot of different things, What will heaven be like? Why does life have to be so hard sometimes? and recently I was thnking about, What really matters?

Maybe it was the fact that I was helping a friend clean out their garage. It was like reliving history as things stored away came out to the light for the first time in a long time. It reminded me of how life changes and things we were once passionate about are now forgotten or ignored. We put so much time and effort into things that we eventually lose interest in. We expend our resources toward things that only matter for a while and then we are off on to other things.

What really matters? My relationship to God. My relationship to my family. My relationship to those I love. When it comes right down to it, it has to be relationships. As I ponder this, I think relationships are on the high priority list wth God as well. He sent His only Son to die on the cross so that I could have relationship with Him. To send your only Son to die in my place tells me that must really matter to God.

I want to streamline my life a little more. Be less cluttered with stuff and more focued on what really matters. I know stuff can make life interesting and I have no problem with that, but neither do I want it to get in the way of the thngs that are most important. I want to love God, my wife, my children, my family, my friends. I want the expenditure of my resources to reflect those priorities. My time, my money, my attention I want to make the greatest impact in those priorities than anywhere else. Hopefully when I go to be wth Jesus there won't be much to haul away to the dump as the things I chose to put my resources into are eternal. I pray that for you too.

Back To School

I did not post last week, my parents were in town and we were out and about doing the activities of summer and visiting loved ones. It was a very busy time, one of those times when it seems like there is a collision of schedules into a very short time frame. One of the significant events was sending our youngest son away to University.

This past Monday was the beginning of school for our public schools. I read many entries on Facebook of parents taking their children to school either for the first time and of course many to a new grade. It begins again. Some have high school seniors, some are sending their children to kindergarten, it is a day of excitement, sadness and emotions.

As JoLynn and I are again, "empty nesters", let me impart some perspective to parents who are somewhere in the middle years of raising children. I know you have heard it before, but do treasure these early years of raising your kids. These are the years they are most dependent upon you for everything and the years they are most impressionable. If in general we raise our children for 18 years before they begin to leave home for school or careers (it does stretch out past 18...) then we have to realize by the time they turn 9 years old, our job is half way done! But it isn't just a math realization. The second half is not equal to the first. Things significantly change after age 9. Our children grow more decidedly indepentdent, they want to make more and more of their own decisions, especially about spending their money and fashions being worn to school. In the second half they begin to develop friends that generally take more of their time, activities that take more of their time and then there comes their ability to drive. Before we are aware enough to catch it, our time with our children slips away and we feel like our home is only where they sleep, eat and shower before they are off again.

I write to share my thoughts with you on this matter so that you can take steps now, set priorities now to help you not fall prey to the tyranny of your children being swept up and away from you before the time is right. Other than the basic dependecies of where they live and eat, it seems like our children are in a functional way leaving home earlier and earlier. A wise parent will see this and help preserve the integrity of the family.

I encourage families to continue to go to church together, to not allow extra-curricular activities interfere with family or church ministries. It is a natural thing for children to begin to want to do other things than go to church as they grow (they also want Snickers candy bars for dinner instead of meat and potatoes) but I encourage parents to hold the line, set the priorities and the agenda and lead your children instead of the other way around.

These child raising years will be the minority years of your life eventually, even though they may represent half your life at this point. Make these years count for your family and for God. Do whatever you can to help shape your child's spiritual future by keeping them close and on track.

Unexpected Sources of Help

I am amazed and yet not amazed at how God comes through. I am amazed because I never know how God will answer our prayers but I am not amazed that God does answer our prayers. I got word to day from my good friend, Pastor Mike Rose who pastors the Juneau Christina Center in our Captiol City. Two years ago they embarked upon a very ambitious vision to build a community youth center. Financially this was going to be and has been a stretch, yet they plunged into the project with everything they had. From personal experience, I know that every project has a low point, a place in the life of the project where all the tanks run dry it seems. Financial tank, emotional tank, energy tank, resource tank, etc. all seem to point to empty at the same time. It is at this point that doubts come in, fears can enter the heart and all your critics seem to have voices louder than those who believe in you. It can be a dark time for a leader, a time when all your friends seem to be somewhere else. It can be a dark time for a church when you wonder if the project will ever get completed and the financial strains will ever ease. A descriptive phrase about times like this, "not my favorite."

Well, Pastor Rose and JCC were at this low point of their project. It was stalled as they were out of cash and that is what was needed to order the last work to be done so they could open the doors. Lots of critics began to wag their tongues, there was no obvious place where help could be found. This past Sunday they made a presentation to their church about what was needed to open the doors and begin this new ministry. Not knowing what to expect they trusted God. There was no obvious sign that what they needed was on its way. If there is anywhere in Alaska that the recession we are experiencing nationally is affecting our state, it is our Capitol.

The outcome of this past Sunday? They received an offering of over $100,000 dollars! One hundred thousand of that offering came from one individual! Who would have known? Who could have predicted? The person who gave the large gift had never done so before. It was a truly unexpected source of help. Wow! Way to go, God!

The point of this? I am amazed at how God works. I am not amazed that He does what He does. That is good for you and I as well. At our low points we can believe for the unexpected. How God will do it, we may never know, that He will do it, we can expect.

Men's Do Something!!

What a time we had! 19 men set out to shoot the rapids on the six mile river on the way to Hope, Alaska. It was an exciting experience, definately one that anyone who is interested should try. Chugach Outdoor Center was the rafting company. Their guides treated us very well and the equipment we used was excellent. The day really started after we were briefed on all the rules and donned all the equipment. We were instructed on how to swim 100 yards down the six mile river to the other side. It was a bit intimidating to plunge into that frigid glacial stream when you are nice and warm and dry. However, that is when you discover how good your gear is. Mine was great, dry as a bone after my swim. At that point we broke into teams to paddle the rafts.

The first river miles are spent learning commands from your guide, "Forward 2", "Left turn", "Back 3", you get the idea. Nervousness rises as you approach the first rapids. You shoot through without a problem. Confidence swells. And so the day goes. Our raft was an exceptionally good team and that helped us out a great deal. There would be several sets of rapids to run and then beautiful periods of drifting with great scenery.

The day climaxes as you enter the "third canyon" which the guide has been building up all day. These rapids are bigger, trickier and more dangerous. Anxiety rises, confidence wanes as the sun that has been warmning you disappears behind the steep canyon walls and the roar of water fills the silence.

The third canyon is a bit more of a challenge, as one rapid in particular caused some problems for two rafts, one of which was ours. Believe it or not, this actually increases the excitement and fun. Such great laughter and team action make it such a great experience.

We all had a great day which was topped off with moose and caribou sausage on the grill. There was a lot of talk about making this an annual event, so if you missed this trip, be ready to pounce on the opportunity when it comes up again next year.