From “Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life” by Henri Nouwen with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird
God’s time is timeless. Kairos contains both past and future events in the present moment. Words like after and before, or first or last, belong to mortal life and chronology. God is all in all, the beginning and end of time, and the deeper meaning of history. To gain this wider perspective, we first look backward to see how the seemingly unrelated events of our lives have brought us to where we are now. Like the people of Israel, who repeatedly reflected on their history and discovered God’s guiding hand in the many painful events that led them to Jerusalem, so we pause to discern God’s presence in the events that have made or unmade us. For by not remembering, we allow forgotten memories to intrude into the present and become independent forces with crippling effects on our lives. Forgetting the past is like turning our most intimate teacher against us. Remembering the past in this way allows us to live in the present and gain hope for the future, until chronos to kairos.
This view of time helps us practice patience in discernment. If we are patient, we can look at all the events of each day – expected and unexpected – as holding promise for us. Patience is the attitude that says we cannot force life but have to let it grow in its own time. Patience lets us see the people we meet, the events of the day, and the unfolding history of our times as all part of that slow process of development and final liberation.