Living in the Dasein of Kairos...

I have a confession to make: I know very little Greek.

But I do have a handful of Greek words that I find to be extremely significant words. In my humble opinion, the most significant Greek word is the word kairos. Kairos is the one Greek word everyone ought to know.

There are two words for time in Greek: chronos and kairos.

Chronos (where we get our English word ‘chronology’) means a literal minutes-and-seconds time (i.e. Tuesday at 3:45pm). The clearest image is that of a clock or a wristwatch. Kairos, however, implies a different type of time – a less literal, but more significant time.

Chronos is quantitative minutes. Kairos is qualitative moments.

Kairos is pregnant time, the time of possibility – moments in our day, our week, our month, our year or our lifetime that define us. It is a crossroads. It has the ripe opportunity to make you bitter or better. It is a teachable moment. It is the right or opportune moment. They are rarely neutral and always leave an impact on us.

J.R. Briggs