These little fellows greeted Marlene and I when we returned to Brazoria National Wildlife Reserve last week.  (Yes, there are two!)  These baby Alligators represent a new generation after the devastation caused by Hurricane Ike ion 2008.  Before Ike, you would almost always see gators in the pond at the entrance.  But after the saltwater flooded into the reserve, many of the gators either moved on or were killed.  This is the first new generation that we have seen in the 7 years since Ike.  It is all in the timing.  Brazoria is recovering!

In Greek there are two different words for time.  The first is chronos or clock time.  This time was created by the human mind to measure the passage of time.  We call these measurements seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, etc.  The second word is kairos or the right time.  It is not measured at all.  When something is ready to occur, it happens at the right time.  Christian writers use kairos to refer to God’s time, the right time.

Unfortunately, when we created chronos we also invented impatience, being late, frustration with waiting, toe-tapping, pacing, and bad moods because we didn’t get what we wanted when we wanted it.  How many of our daily upsets involve the clicks on the clock?  Whenever I visited Brazoria in the last seven years I would be filled with grief over the losses to Ike and the anxiety that the world forever changed.  This is chronos thinking.  The birds and gators and flowers had been lost.  Hopelessness and despair replaced the joy I once felt during my visits.  Chronos gives birth to the terrible twins of hopelessness and despair in a human heart trapped in clock time.

However, when our hearts embrace kairos the world within ourselves is changed.  We live in anticipation of the right time that will surely appear.  Ike was not the first and nor will be the last hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast.  But, in time, the coast has found healing as it has in the past.  The birds and gators and flowers have returned more than once.  It is just a matter of being the right time.  In place of hopelessness and despair, kairos gives birth to the joy of anticipation and hope in the healing that will surely come.

These little alligators are signs that even in the midst of great tragedy, the seeds of hope exists for those who have the eyes to see and the heart to receive.  At the present, we are besieged with those who declare that the end of the world is near.  They instill fear and anxiety, despair and hopelessness in order to sell their products or gain their votes.  They play an old slight of hand with chronos hoping that we will not see the signs of healing  that are already taking place.

I encourage you to recognize the clock and calendar for what they are, human inventions.  Focus your hearts on the time that brings healing and hope to life.  Lean into God’s time and live in the sweet anticipation of the right time when all shall be made whole.  In those moments you will find both joy and hope lighting up the darkness of your inner life.  Timing IS everything!

Bob