Time after time

The new year brings with it thoughts on time - the passing of time, the loss of time, the lack of time...
I pass a birthday milestone the day after the new year - another reminder of the years that are flying by. My grandparents are aging, and I realize that I suppose I will, one day, be 'old' too. With each holiday we spend with them, each conversation on the phone, there is the knowledge that there will come a day, more sooner than later, that our time together will be the last time this side of heaven. I'm not ready. I'm not ready to lose my own years that I will never get back. I'm not ready to lose people that I will no longer be able to be with, to talk to, to love - in person.
But to be 'in person' is to be 'in time'. To be outiside of time is to be in a realm of existence that we only partly occupy while we live on earth. L'Engle speaks of 'kairos' time and 'chronos' time in several of her writings. Until last Saturday I had thought that these time sketches were all her own. Kairos is time outside of time. It is where God lives. It is where eternity exists - not in its forever expansion of time but in the fact that it is all-encompassing and beyond time. What is evident in L'Engle's writing is that we can, at moments, be connected to kairos time. There are actions that bear significance in eternity and are therefore outside the bounds of time. Salvation, most prominently. But also 'walking with God'. Fellowship, meditation, prayer - all touch on kairos, they are moments spent beyond time.
While God is outside of time he recognizes our attachment to time. In Joel is the promise to repay the years the locusts had eaten. The promise is for renewed, regiven time - not the crop, or health, or wealth - but minutes, hours, years.
I spend so much of my time with kids that I often feel that I live in different years of 'me'. L'Engle points out that at any given moment we are ages 3, 6, 20, 27. (and even moments that we are beyond the chronological age that our bodies are) I spend hours being age 11 and 15 and lesser amounts of time feeling even remotely older. But apparently getting older is not something I have an option about. There is a promise to repay the years the locusts have eaten, but I will not wake tomorrow morning and be 22 instead of 32. I cannot understand how this promise is to be fulfilled, and perhaps it is not my promise to expect fulfillment. What I do know is that my life often catches glimpses of kairos. In this there is a depth to existing that is nothing short of a miraculous gift of time, or moments in eternity.