I Spy Kairos

Growing up just outside NYC, one of my favorite books as a young girl was Harriet the Spy. A young adult novel by Harriet Fitzhugh, published in 1964, the protagonist was an 11 year-old aspiring spy who lived on the upper west side. Encouraged by her nanny "Ole Golly", she carefully observes her classmates, friends, and neighbors, writing about them with biting wit in a journal. Her writing is vivid, at times brutal, and captures the essence of the people she is observing. She is a spy of the first order, until one day her journal falls into the wrong hands: an adolescent girl. The girl promptly shares what Harriet has written. Harriet, in turn, is maligned and rejected; she is devastated.

It has been said that we live in the direction of what we observe. For Harriet, her observations were focused on the eccentricities of those she spied upon. While there was truth in her writing, she lacked compassion. Until her peers formed a "spy catchers club" devoted to making her life miserable, she did not understand how one-sided and partial her observations were.

Like Harriet, we can spend our time critically observing others. We can name all that is wrong with them and our world. Or we can choose to look at the world through the eyes of Christ. We can look with compassion and love. We can commit to spying out kairos moments where God is at work.

Spying out kairos moments involves a change in how we observe our world, a change in thinking and doing, perhaps even a change in believing.  It is the realization that we have an opportunity to spy out God at work and to name the grace of those moments. We live in a time when fear drives a lot of decisions. The question is will we join God at work.   Or will we allow anxiety and fear to drive our decisions? Will we believe the lie that grace is not present and at work in our world?

Now is the acceptable time to spy kairos; the right time to seek justice. We spy kairos when lives are touched and communities transformed. We spy Kairos when we finally see who we really are, where we have been, and what we must do. We spy Kairos when we do whatever it takes to work together for the already and not yet of God's reign.

With blessing,

Debbie Rundlett

General Presbyter

Holy Habit: I Spy Kairos

Jesus calls us to live in the kairos of God's reign, in this moment, seeking and searching for God at work in our world. The call to spy out kairos moments carries with it an emphasis on being present, putting away the distractions that pull us away from God and that lead us to live insular and selfish lives.

Jesus models this very way of being present. In his healing of people, he was empowered by an awareness of those in need. He did not view them as people who simply wanted something from him; he recognized in their longing a desire to encounter the divine, and he became that presence to them.

Wisdom for living in kairos time:

1. Following God means venturing into the unknown.
2. God's calling to salvation and his commissioning into mission are one and the same.
3. You are blessed to be a blessing.
4. To become the blessing we have to take our hands off of everything and make God our trust and his kingdom our delight.
5. To become the blessing, we have to believe the impossible.

Through the Beautiful Gate: A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land 

PC(USA) Announces Registration for Big Tent 2015

July 30 - August 1, 2015, University of Tennessee Conference Center, Knoxville, TN

Big Tent 2015 registration is up and running and everyone is excited about what it will bring!

Please consider including the Big Tent video (https://youtu.be/xShTbAESJj8 ) and the Big Tent web site link (http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/big-tent/ ) on your presbytery web site or in other promotional opportunities.   The video is just 1 minute long and gives a quick overview of what makes this Big Tent unique and would be a great minute for mission at a presbytery meeting!

Thanks so much!

Tom

Thomas D Hay

Director of Assembly Operations

Associate Stated Clerk

Office of the General Assembly

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)