Time

2 Peter 3:1-10 (NRSV) This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you; in them I am trying to arouse your sincere intention by reminding you that you should remember the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken through your apostles. First of all you must understand this, that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts and saying, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!" They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world of that time was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the godless. 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 perish, but all to come to repentance.  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.  The idea of time is tightly woven into the fabric of Advent (and Lent as well).  Nothing reminds us of time as much as waiting, and Advent is all about waiting.  And when we wait, sometimes we get impatient, and sometimes we forget the promises that we are waiting for.   It's easy to try to fix our standards of time into this frame of waiting.  It is tempting, for example, to look in Revelation and try to impose our time onto the signs we read there, just as it is tempting to fix on the earth a 7 day or 6000 year time frame of creation and age.  Waiting is hard, and it makes it easier when we can attach a chronological number to it so that be can be certain of "when" we can stop waiting or "how long" we must continue to wait, rather than "who" we are waiting for. But Peter reminds us here that God's time is not our time.  There are two ancient Greek words for time that help us here.  There is chronos time, the every day sequential time that makes waiting hard. And there is kairos time which directly translated means "opportune moment."  But it is also what we call "God's time."  It's that watershed moment of time where the quality of time is measured rather than the quantity.  It's that instant in your life where you are so overwhelmed that chronological time seems to stand still and doesn't matter. Waiting in kairos time is very different than waiting in chronos time.  And that is what Advent gives us.  We wait in God's time for the coming of God into our midst.  For the ancient Jewish people waiting for the Messiah, it was no less difficult to wait than for us post-resurrection folk who wonder about what the next coming will be like.   But we are invited to bask in kairos time.  Seizing the moments that capture us and bring us closer to God.  Letting God's time rain down on us so that each moment is lived abundantly as we wait. God of time and history, we wait for you.  Sometimes that waiting is impatient and harried.  Rain your love down on us to bring us more fully into your time, so that we can savor each moment you have given us as we look forward to your coming. Amen.