“He said therefore, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches” (Luke 13:18-19).

In Mitch Albom’s latest book The Timekeeper, we have a fantasy about the creation of “Father Time,” who as a boy became obsessed with keeping track of hours, days, weeks and years; thus, he became enslaved and tethered to his own existence rather than living in the freedom of God.

There is a great deal of theology, of course, centered around time. Scripture, for example, reminds us God is beyond time (not in time) as time is a part of creation or a human concept. God’s time is not our time; God’s ways are not our ways, the prophets remind us. In the New Testament was read that to God “a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8).

Yet, time bears us along. We all are aware of the passage of time. We mark our lives by the clock, work on the clock, fall behind, work ahead and lament the loss of time or the waste of time. When we are engaged in ministry, we often live and die by the clock; and we can feel the weight of time in every endeavor.

However, Scripture offers us a much different way of looking at life. People who live by faith are bound to eternity. We are not so much interested in cronos time as we are in cairos eternity. The differences here are startling. Cronos gives us our English words such as chronology and has to do with measurement, while cairos in classical Greek philosophy, has to do with the gods and that which is beyond measurement or is eternal.

Jesus reminds us that we already are living in the kingdom or eternal time. When we enter into life with God, we go from life to life; we are transformed from a time people to an eternal people.

I wonder what might happen in ministry if we allowed our teenagers to experience a day of being instead of a day of scheduling? How would youth ministry be different, how would it feel different, if we could discover cairos instead of chronos? How would ministry be shaped if we were living in a continuum of life with God?

How might our outlook on life be different if we could live in the eternal now?