Barriers: Time & Expectations

Last updated on January 21, 2023

Featured photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

Here at Roots & Light, we place significant value on spiritual investment.  We believe it is essential to life.  We also understand that if you’re here, you’re at least a little bit interested in spiritual investment as well.

If the idea of spiritual investment is new for you, or if you’re in a place where it has been pushed aside for other things and you’re ready to consider investing again, we hope this post series will be of service to you while you’re figuring out what that looks like.

Over the next couple months, we will look at three common barriers to investing in our own spiritual growth: time, energy, and direction. In this post, we’ll take our first look at time as a barrier to spiritual investment.

Expectations

Regarding time and spiritual investment, let’s begin with expectations. We can have a lot of assumptions about what time spent in spiritual investment can look like. If you’ve grown up in a religious setting, you may have been taught that a proper period of time spent in spiritual investment consists of at least an hour devoutly sitting in a quiet corner, reading your Bible, and praying off of note cards for all the illnesses and traveling mercies of the ladies in your women’s bible study group. That is certainly one way to invest spiritually. But it is not the only way. And it may not even be the best way for you.

When it comes to our expectations or assumptions of what spiritual investment time is, it is helpful to clarify what we mean when we talk about “time.” When we look at references to time in scripture, we find two types of time that apply to our conversation.

Chronos time and Kairos time

Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words tells us this about these two understandings of time:

“Broadly speaking, chronos expresses the duration of a period, kairos stresses it as marked by certain features; …Chronos marks quantity, kairos, quality.”

Chronos is chronological time. The sequence of measurable duration. The time it takes Earth to orbit the sun. The time it takes the moon to orbit Earth. The number of seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour, hours in a day, days in a week, etc. Most often, this is what we mean when we talk about time.

Kairos is the meaning of a period of time. It is often translated as “season” in English language Bible translations. We might use this in our everyday life when talking about The Holidays, or the season of pregnancy, or retirement. It’s not about the length of time when we’re speaking of kairos, but about the significance or quality of the time.

In our Western culture, when we think about barriers to investing our time in spiritual growth, we most often are thinking of it in terms of chronos time. Chronos time is a limited commodity; there’s only so many hours in the day, right? Yet, chronos time is limited in any culture, for any person, even people who have that “ideal” time to sit and ponder the scriptures, pray for hours, and somehow still have time to care for their own lives and the needs of others.

That picture of spiritual investment time doesn’t feel realistic for us, so we say, “I don’t have time.”

The truth of the matter is, we have the same time (chronos) as everyone else. Perhaps what we’re actually saying is that the time (chronos) that we have available is not available for spiritual investment because it is already obligated elsewhere. This is worth investigating, and we’ll cover it more in the next post, but before we talk about our time obligations, I want to challenge us to shift our mindset around time as it is right now.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock

When my oldest son was around 3 years old, I was a single mom working a more-than-full-time job in a corporate setting. My son and I lived alone. All the housework and errands were mine to complete. I woke him early, got dressed for work, made sure we ate, and got him to daycare on time (usually). After working long hours, I fought rush hour traffic in a busy city to pick him up from daycare (usually just before that late pickup penalty kicked in), prepare and feed us both dinner, and parent his little rebellious self until we both fell asleep.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

It would have been easy, even understandable, to say I didn’t have time to invest spiritually. By all accounts, if you were to look at my daily schedule, that is the conclusion you would draw. I didn’t have time.

But during that season (kairos) of my life, investing in my spiritual growth was a lifeline for me. I was at the end of my own capabilities each and every day. I knew that I couldn’t do the single, working mom thing without a solid relationship with the God of the Bible. With my God. And just like fostering any other relationship, I needed to spend chronos time learning who he was and who I was to him.

What I was looking for was kairos time. Quality time with meaning. Without realizing it, that is the direction I took.

I began to look at my chronos time and discover ways to make it into kairos time by giving it meaning and quality. I did not always have control over how much chronos time I got to myself, but with the intention of not simply adding one more appointment to my daily schedule but to invest in my relationship with the God of the universe, I soon discovered I had all the time that I needed for spiritual investment with rich returns.

Time Change

If we can move from considering our personal spiritual investment less about the quantity of our time (chronos) and more about the meaning, or quality, of our time (kairos), then perhaps we will find that we have more time than we think we have.

Let’s get practical.

With minds that think in a chronos manner, our first thought may be to look at our calendar and figure out where we can put another appointment.

“An appointment with Jesus.”

If you have space like that on your calendar, by all means do it! It’s a great thing. But I am imagine, that if you are here with me in the middle of these words, that’s probably not you. You may be in a season (kairos) of life where your calendar is booked solid and you don’t have room for anything else. I also know, that if you’ve read this far, you are interested in your own spiritual investment.

Kairos time. Quality time. Meaningful time. It matters to you.

If you keep a calendar, and you want to get that detailed, take a look at it. Or, simply reflect on all the little and big ways you spend your chronos time. Think about the parts of your days that you may not write on your schedule. Taking a shower. Washing the dishes. Commuting. Scrolling the socials. Whatever these things are for you. You’re looking for the parts of everyday life you do by rote. The things you don’t even have to think about, you just move through them. Those are spaces that are prime for transformation into kairos time.

Talk it out

I’m using the example of washing dishes, since I find myself doing this multiple times a day, and I don’t particularly find joy in the task. Fill-in-the-blank for your activity.

When you start washing the dishes, begin by greeting God and telling him why you showed up to talk to him right now. You can talk out loud, which I highly recommend, but if it feels too weird, you can talk to him in your thoughts. He hears all of those too. With each dish you pick up, express thankfulness to him for each person, including yourself, who exists to dirty that dish. If the thought of the dish brings anything else to your mind, talk to him about those things. Are you looking at a dollar store, worn out piece of plastic but you can’t afford to replace it right now? Talk to him about the financial strain you are under. Get all of those feelings and worries out. Ask him for his wisdom.

Whatever comes to mind and heart, tell him. Tell him what you are happy about. Tell him all about your sadness. As you dry those dishes or load them into the dishwasher, take it as an opportunity to remember who he is. Repeat to yourself whatever you know about him from the scriptures, and from the places where your own life experience intersects with the scriptures.

He is really there. He really knows and cares about you. He is really listening. Not just to the things you’re saying, but to the person behind those things. There is no concern, sorrow, or joy too small or too great for his notice and interest.

Use your imagination. What if that filthy pot is instead a delightful cup of your favorite beverage that warms your insides while you sit across the table from the perfect lover of your soul and tell him everything.

When you’ve let it all out, stop talking and leave room, in silence, for his Holy Spirit to speak to your spirit what you need and he desires to give you in this moment. Listen for his gift of life. He gives it to all who seek it with a humble heart.

Maybe you don’t really know him yet. Maybe all you know is what other people have told you. Try talking to him as you would someone you just met. It will feel a little weird talking or thinking “to the air” at first, but keep it up. He’ll show up the more practice you get listening for him.

Ask him who he is. Tell him who you think he might be. Ask him to help you understand him. Ask him those questions that feel too taboo to ask. Leave space for the silence. The silence is so important. It is in the silence that our spirit discerns the voice of his Spirit.

Include scripture

If you have the opportunity to choose a passage of scripture to include in your transformed kairos time, it will be of even greater benefit. It is in the words of scripture that God has chosen to reveal who he is. Try starting with some of these:

Old Testament:

• Proverbs – wisdom verses that are brief and immediately applicable to everyday living.
• Psalms – songs and poetry written to express the wide gamut of the human experience from grief to joy, persecution, fear, anger, vengeance, celebration, contemplation and more.

New Testament:

• Gospel of John – spiritual gospel that tells the story of Jesus in symbolic ways. Often can feel more approachable by those unfamiliar with Jewish history.
• James – a wisdom book of the New Testament with paragraph-length passages applicable to everyday living in light of the grace of God

Wherever you begin, choose a short passage, put it in front of you, and get going on your automatic task. Read the passage to yourself over and over. Ask God questions about the passage. Ask yourself questions about it. Relate it to something you already know. It doesn’t even have to be something you already know in the Bible. It can be something you know from your own experience of everyday life.

You don’t even have to reach any particular conclusions by the end of your time. Simply spending time, meaningful time, learning who God is and who you are and who his people are transforms your chronos time into kairos time. And the more frequently you do it, the more transformation you’ll experience.

He has time for you

You see Friend, the God of the universe is present in every chronos moment in your life. We can make those chronos moments into kairos time when we reach out to him wherever we are, in whatever we are doing. Prayer, expressing gratitude, listening in silence, thinking on scripture, are all excellent ways to invest spiritually. These prepare and train our hearts to know him and to listen for him and to him.

No chronos moment is wasted or poorly used when we seek his companionship in it. Companionship with him is the chief end of all life. When the end of days arrives and our great redeemer and conqueror, Jesus Christ, returns, all chronos will become kairos spent in the company, pleasure, and delight of our God.

Why not begin now?