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I figure we have all been there as moms. Hectically trying to keep to a schedule. Time. The clock. In these moments, we get stuck in all we have to do. All we have to remember. There is not enough time, not enough sticky notes to remind us, not enough hands, not enough energy. Not enough. This anxiety, this worry, this fear of imperfection, captured my mind, heart and soul only a few weeks ago as I busily readied myself and my 8 month old son for our first Mother’s Together of this year. What to wear, what to dress him in, what to eat, what to pack things in, what to pack and more. All to accomplish within an hour or so, and would I remember it all? My mind was so intently focused on these things… as if they actually mattered. And do they? Really? It was only once I had everything in the car, including my son (don’t want to forget him) and was driving down the road, I realized the answer. These things didn’t matter. I took a deep breath and sighed. Phew!
You see, as I took the gravel road on my lengthy drive to church, I was blown away by something I hadn’t seen yet this summer. Not sure how I missed it. I must not take this route as often as I thought. Sunflowers. Bright yellow faces pointing upward. Basking in the light that poured upon them from the sun. Not just a few but acres of them. Fields of them. Hundreds of thousands of sunflowers. My favorite flower. I was captivated by God in this moment. I stopped. I had to capture this moment with a picture. As I continued down the road and the hills continued to spill out yellow, I recognized God’s kairos timing. You see, I was caught up in chronos - clock time. In their book Building a Discipling Culture, Mike Breen and Steve Cockram discuss the difference between kairos time and chronos time (ch. 6). His breakthrough moments versus our constantly-counted minutes.
Five minutes to do my hair (that is a joke), two minutes to pick out an outfit, fifteen minutes to feed my son, three minutes to pack the diaper bag, forty minutes to get to church etc. But God’s timing, kairos, is not bound by the clock that my life is so devastatingly driven by. He interrupts our lives to speak to us. To help us grow. And if we hurry and worry and fret we will miss it. We will miss the opportunity to observe His beauty, His movement in our life, His work. We will miss the opportunity to reflect upon what he is saying and doing in our lives. We will miss the opportunity to look up to Him desperate for His love and grace and peace and allow Him to pour into us His word, His compassion, His will. Just as the sunflowers do with the sun. I almost missed it!
Since this morning, I have seen this field a few more times and it is interesting how downtrodden they seem when the sun is not shining and contrastingly, how uplifted they are when it is. This observation led me to ask a metaphorical question; are we sunflowers with God? When we are not receiving His light are we downtrodden? When we are so busy with the details of the life this world thinks we should live and miss His voice, His touch, His plan do our faces seem to hang low? And yet, just like the sun, He is always there. Sometimes we allow things in our lives to become the clouds that keep us from receiving His light. We allow them to become the darkness that keeps our faces from Him. Keeps us from hearing His voice, feeling His touch, seeing His will. Yet He is always there.
“Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (NIV, Hebrews 4:7). Soften our hearts then? Allow His voice to speak into us. His word to speak into us. “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (NIV, Hebrews 4:12). When God interrupts our lives, an opportunity presents itself for us to grow. Kairos. It can seem scary to open our hearts to God in these moments, especially when these moments evoke negative emotions. Scary to begin the learning process. Scary to find out what is deep in our hearts, that really, He already knows. We are just unaware. Yet in these kairos moments, we can observe, we can reflect. We can talk with others we trust and who are walking with God to learn more about what God is saying to us and then figure out what He wants us to do about it. Also scary.
God is good though. He gave us the great Comforter. The holy spirit of Jesus. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet was without sin” (NIV, Hebrews 4:15). Jesus has gone before us. Jesus understands us. Jesus has been there too. Therefore we can fully rely on Him in our brokenness because He is without sin. So as we lift our faces like sunflowers to God, in these kairos moments, resting in Jesus, we can find confidence to approach God and soften our hearts to hear His voice. “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (NIV, Hebrews 4:16). In our time of need. Approach Him. The sunflower needs the sun to grow. We need God to grow. It is in our time of need that we can grow the most. This chronos time of need, this time based on our clock, can become His time to shine. His grace upon our faces so we can be uplifted. Uplifted for His glory. It is my prayer to be caught up in His time. The kairos. To let go of my time. Chronos. To lift my eyes to Him in confidence of finding mercy and grace. And grow. Like the sunflower.
- Tami I.
Breen, Mike, and Steve Cockram. Building a Discipling Culture.
Pawleys Island, SC: 3 Dimension Ministries, 2009. Print.
