Anchored to Time
What’s up, guys!? Funny thing—I had a totally different post planned for today, but God clearly had other plans. Also… it’s about a week to 2 weeks late because I got sick. Kids really are petri dishes for everything. 😅 Still, a much more pressing need came up, so here we are.
First, I need to clear up something from my last post.
I wrote: “Two things are certain in this life that cannot be redeemed: a life lost and time.”
That wasn’t quite right. The word I was really reaching for was restored.
Redemption is about purchase or deliverance at a cost.
Restoration is about being made whole again.
The bigger point is this: in our human limitations, we can’t redeem or restore life or time. But God can.
How do I know? Because scripture says so!
Joel 2:25 (NKJV) “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust...'
That’s powerful. God promises not just to redeem people, but to restore years that have been wasted. And for this post, I want to zero in on time.
(We already know Jesus can raise the dead—but time? That’s a whole different story.)
To really see this, it helps to understand how the New Testament talks about time. There are two key words in Greek:
Chronos: chronological time, the ticking of the clock, the countdown you can’t stop.
Kairos: appointed or opportune time, those God-orchestrated moments when heaven intersects earth. (News flash: this is when God is prompting you to act.)
Think of it like this: Chronos is a clock ticking down to zero. Kairos is when God rewrites the schedule.
So how can years be restored? Because God doesn’t just reset the clock—He fills the time ahead with kairos moments. Openings in the bounds of time where there are windows of opportunity that are so weighty they leave such an impact in the story of your life.
Time itself is one thing. But the way in which we perceive and engage with time — that’s something else entirely. And it’s in that space where restoration is made a reality.
I was watching I Can Only Imagine, a biographical drama about the man who wrote the song. I had no idea it was a Christian song until now. The film follows the story of Bart Millard, who grows up with an emotionally and physically abusive father. Later in life, his father repents and becomes a believer. There’s a powerful scene when Bart comes back home and finds his dad—now born again—causing an internal wrestle on how to resolve the hurt of the past.
A couple things stand out from that scene:
Bart’s dad says he wants to make memories. Bart pushes back — “every memory I already have of you is bad.” In other words, you can’t erase chronos. The past is written, and its imprint can’t be undone.
The father’s desire to “make things right” sounds noble, but it assumes that present goodwill can overwrite years of pain. But when that doesn’t undo the past, he’s left frustrated and confused.
The climax lands in this exchange:
Dad: “Can’t you give me a chance?”
Bart: “No! You’ve gotta just give up on that dream, Dad. ’Cause it keeps you from this. From knowing what’s real.”
Here’s the tension: both Bart and his father are bound within chronos just like every other human. But within it, Bart is chained to past wounds. His father is chained to the illusion that present effort can rewrite history. Our lives unfold in time, but our identity is not confined to it.
This is why Scripture warns, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). We often find ourselves under the false pretense that a treasure is something positive when in reality it can be things like pain, fear. And something you treasure is about the value you place on it. The very thing both Bart and his father wanted to do away with they had locked themselves together with. If you get a chance to watch this you will see that this is just one of the effects of what they had done.
Time is like a racetrack—it just is. But when a runner steps onto that track, they aren’t running aimlessly; they have a goal, a purpose. If that runner gets tangled up in memories of past failures, the event itself becomes an anchor. That’s why Paul reminds us in Hebrews 12:1 to “lay aside every weight… that so easily entangles… and let us run with endurance the race set before us.”
Up to now, we’ve spent most of our energy talking about restoration of time—how we often shackle ourselves to chronos by carrying unnecessary weight. But there’s more. It isn’t enough to simply avoid the traps of anchoring oneself to events and even things within chronos; we must also align ourselves with kairos. Otherwise, life begins to look like this:
Till next entry!
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