Christine Smallwood via James K.A Smith in Image Journal:
“It’s hard to know when something ends,” Dorothy says late in the novel. But maybe this isn’t just because of our own myopic inability to recognize the end; maybe it’s because, with kairos hovering over everything, you never know when an ending isn’t the end. When the dead are raised, not even death is the end. The question isn’t “What time is it?” but “Which time is it?” The absolute is available to everyone in every age. That means any blip of chronos holds the possibility of being kairos, a moment pregnant with possibility. As Daniel Weidner has said, speaking about the theologian Paul Tillich, kairos means “every moment might be the small gate through which the messiah will enter.” It might even mean that those moments of serendipity aren’t random coincidences but gifts, a sign that someone is whispering just to you.
