According to the Greeks, time is not just time. Some time is chronos time: the hours and minutes and seconds of constant progression. Other time is kairos time: the moments that seem to step out of lockstep march and take on a more transcendent shape. Chronos is about quantity. Kairos is about quality. Chronos is objective duration. Kairos is subjective significance. Chronos time happens the same for everyone. But everyone has different experiences of kairos time.
I’ve reflected on time a lot in recent months, as I’ve looked back on the last decade. It was a consequential decade for me. I became a husband, a father, a church elder, a book author. Much happened in the decade’s 3,650 days, but for me certain days stick out.
Days when time stood still. Days forever etched in my memory.
I sometimes dream of heaven and wonder what earthly time will be like to us when we are in eternity. Will the happenings of our earthly lives be something in our consciousness we can access like a favorite old novel we pull out from time to time? Maybe we will have the ability to somehow revisit the highlights of our lives—or maybe even all of history. Maybe eternity will be like time travel tourism through the kairos highlights of chronos existence—retrieval of those ephemeral joys where, in temporal life, we had glimpses of eternity.
If so, these are 10 of the days I would want to revisit from the last 10 years. What would be yours?
August 13, 2010: Hipster Christianity release party
The decade kicked off for me with the release of my first book, Hipster Christianity. I launched the book on Friday, August 13 with an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal and a party in downtown Los Angeles in the Parish Hall of Immanuel Presbyterian Church. The party’s food theme was “hipster church potluck” and the music was vintage hippie Jesus People tunes. So many important people in my life at the time were there, and it was a blast. Perhaps of most long-term significance is the fact that I had just met Kira the week before and invited her to the party. She came, bought a book, and I signed it with a heart. Little did I know then that she would be my wife and co-host at my next book release party.
May 28, 2011: Tree of Life viewing party
The release of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life was a big deal for me. Malick had long been my favorite filmmaker, and the debut of his decades-germinating magnum opus was something I anticipated for years. So big was this occasion in my life that I organized a viewing of the film at Hollywood’s Arclight Cinerama Dome (the best screen to see any movie), followed by an after party at the nearby Redbury Hotel, with a few dozen of my closest friends. It was my second time seeing the film, but everyone else’s first. It was a thrill to introduce this masterpiece—the best film of the decade and the greatest Christian film ever made—to my friends. Bonus significance points: Just a few months into dating Kira, she helped me host an elaborate party and didn’t shame me for my over-the-top love of Malick :)
August 25, 2012: She says “yes.”
I told Kira we had a “surprise date” on this particular Saturday night, which was a semi-normal thing for me to do. But when we pulled up to the valet drop off at Montage Laguna Beach, Kira knew this would be no normal date. We had dinner at the Studio restaurant, where I had arranged with the chef to create a custom 7-course dinner incorporating ingredients that held special memories for us. When the waiter didn’t bring a menu but instead just started bringing courses of food, Kira knew what was coming. But it didn’t come until the dessert course (strawberry Napoleon) two hours later! The wait was worth it. I got down on one knee, she said yes, the people in the restaurant cheered, and we were given champagne. It was a blissful blur. But that wasn’t the end, because as we exited through the hotel lobby, 40+ of our closest family and friends were there, in the iconic Montage lobby, to celebrate. Kira’s face when she saw each person—including friends who flew in from out of state—was priceless.
April 7, 2013: We say “I do.”
Some of our wedding day is fuzzy in my memory, but a few moments stand out clearly. Watching Kira walk slowly down the long aisle in our outdoor venue, as the string trio played “Come Thou Fount.” Looking out at the guests at dinner, marveling that so many dear people to us were together in one place. The cake cutting—for some reason I remember that moment. The dance floor fun, in spite of a not-great DJ. But the best moment was the drive away. After the sparkler exit and haphazard hugs to various friends and family members, Kira and I got in our car and it was suddenly just us. Married. We drove to the hotel listening to Justin Timberlake, with the volume turned up (20/20 Experience had just come out). The head-spinning spectacle of the wedding was wonderful, but hitting the road and driving away to our future—that was pure magic.
July 8, 2014: Paris in July
On a two-week trip to France, England, and Scotland with Kira, my parents, and my beloved aunt and uncle, this day was the most epic. We visited Versailles in the morning, strolling the palace and gardens on a beautiful sunny day. Lunch was at Moulin de Fourges in Giverny, followed by Monet’s house and gardens. That night Kira and I had the evening to ourselves in Paris, strolling around the Tuileries and the Left Bank, enjoying an amazing dinner at KGB. To this day it’s the only dinner that brought tears to my eyes—specifically the “meadowsweet” ice cream in one of the dessert courses, which was like taking a bite out of the Giverny gardens we had seen earlier in the day. Paris is June features endless daylight. The sunset that day was probably at 10:30 p.m., and for hours the sky was vibrant with purple and pink and orange, capping off a moveable feast of a day if every there was one.
May 9, 2015: “Jesus Saves” in neon
One of the joys of our early marriage was being able to work together at Biola University and collaborate on key university initiatives. The pinnacle of this for us was Biola’s black tie “Conviction and Courage Gala” that we helped dream up and implement. Kira architected the event and I scripted it. It still seems surreal that we pulled it off—turning a parking lot behind the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles (chosen because of Biola’s iconic “Jesus Saves” sign which now stands atop the hotel) into the venue for what was at that point Biola’s most successful 1-day fundraising event ($3.9 million raised). From the dinner to the private concert in the Theater at the Ace Hotel (featuring Josh Garrels, Phil Wickham, and The Brilliance), it was a night we will never forget.
October 30, 2016: Elder Installation
This was a special Sunday. After four years at Southlands and two years on the elder training track, I was installed as an elder at the church. Not something I saw coming when I began the decade, but a role I felt called to and one which has proven to be a blessing. On the day of my installation, both sets of our parents were at church to witness the moment, and the six of us went out to lunch afterward. That night the elders of the church had a dinner party to welcome the newest elders (myself and two others), and we laughed and celebrated late into the night. As someone who has always loved the church but never really thought I would be a “pastor” in a formal sense, this was a surprising day that stands out from the decade.
December 31, 2016: New Year’s Eve in Rome
For every New Year’s Eve of our marriage, Kira and I have tried to be somewhere interesting in the world. In 2016 we decided to bring a group of six young adults from our church along with us. It was a “family” vacation to Rome, the UK, and Ireland in which we studied Christian history, served contemporary churches, and enjoyed one another in a beautiful place. New Year’s Eve in Rome was an epic day from start to finish. My intense itinerary had us start at the Mausoleo di Santa Costanza, built by Constantine in the 4th century for his daughter. Then we had a prayerful moment in Mamertine Prison, where Peter and Paul were possibly imprisoned. We saw the Pantheon, the Circus Maximus, the Testaccio and Trastavere neighborhoods, had gelato at Fatamorgana, rested in Santa Maria in Trastevere (340 A.D.), and capped off the day with an insane New Year’s Eve wine-pairing dinner at Rimessa Roscioli. The best meal of the decade for us.
December 9, 2017: “I’m pregnant.”
The words “I’m pregnant” are never met with ho-hum emotion. Depending on one’s life circumstances, those two words can be unspeakably joyful, devastating, or fear-inducing. For us, the words brought a moment of elation and gratitude unmatched in our marriage up to that point. We had tried for many months to get pregnant, and though there were moments of hopelessness and grief along the way, during Advent 2017 we committed to renewed faith and prayer for a baby. Just a week into Advent, Kira woke me up at 4:30 a.m. with tears in her eyes. I knew what it was before she said the words. Our prayers had been answered. The rest of the day was pure joy. We walked around the Back Bay in Newport. We thanked God. We shared the news with Kira’s parents. We started planning and envisioning the concrete future that had only been a faint hope before.
August 21, 2018: Chester W. McCracken Born
Everything people say about the moment your first child is born is true. It’s surreal. A blur. An outpouring of emotion you didn’t know you had. And that’s just for the dad! I have no doubt that everything about August 21, 2018 will remain in my memory as long as I live. The zero sleep night before. The quick progression at first and then the “Chet got stuck” moment. The epidural and subsequent calm-before-the-storm naps. Then the speedy pushing stage. Then my first glimpse of my son’s head. Then that sweet sound of Chet’s first cry—mixed with Kira’s cries and mine. A trio of tears to begin our fellowship as a family of three. Skin-to-skin time. The joy of looking at my wife for the first time as a nursing mother. The quietness of the moment all three of us managed to nap together on the hospitable bed. The first time I swaddled my son and changed his diaper. Every moment was precious.
