kainos (kī-no's)

New … new … Say it out loud! New. That word just has a ring to it, doesn’t it? A ring of rightness, of freshness, of everything-is-going-to-be-okayness. It tells me that things have changed – for the good! It lets me know that I can wait in eager expectation of what’s to come. It makes me dream, wonder, and wait. New. I like it. I like that word. I like it because for the first time in my life, I’m beginning to understand what new in this sense – kainos – really looks like.

Do you see the picture for our blog at the top of the home page? Just under a year ago, we made the difficult decision to leave the church where we served in the pastorate and to return to the town that felt most like home for both of us. Something we instantly discovered was that right there in this beautiful place, the sun gleamed “Good morning” through the tall pines for the first several hours of each Fall day. If we were really lucky we had the treat of mornings graced with a fog that danced over pastures as the sunlight penetrated it and it was like a painting from a storybook. One morning, I decided to just drive around with my camera and try to capture that sunlight as it forced its way through gaps in the trees. It was a sight I had missed for so many years … a sight, in fact, that I didn’t even recall as I had been so far away from home for so long. It felt new to me as though I had never seen it before.

Today, that same picture symbolizes something different for me that I couldn’t have predicted the day I captured it. Take a peek at it again with me. When I look at that picture now, I find myself wondering what’s around the bend. It seems to say, “Follow the light. New is just around the corner.” Little did I know on the day that I took that picture home with me that it would foretell our story, the one we’re living out today, one year later. We’ve been following the light and new was just around the bend.

New hasn’t come easy. New has cost a high price. New has even felt like the enemy at times. But new is what we are! Kainos. In other words, we’re not what we were!

We see that our God is the creator of new throughout scripture. We see different uses of the word new throughout those same passages and we find hope. Consider the Greek word kainos for a moment. It is defined: of a new kind, unprecedented, novel, uncommon, unheard of. Another great explanation of kainos is: “ … new in kind and in contrast to what previously existed, so taking the place thereof. In that sense kainos looks backward … Kainos is equivalent to not yet having been.”* Kainos is translated as “new” in 2 Corinthians 5:17, which says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Upon receiving Christ, we are all made new. However, at that point, we don’t see that newness completely manifested in us. Over time, as we enjoy – grin – the process of sanctification, of being made like Christ, we see that new taking shape in us and we begin to understand kainos.

This past year has been a kainos year for us! While we could easily describe our experiences as painful, unfair, unjust, tragic, wrong, chaotic, confusing, innocence robbing, … I think you get the picture … we would more joyfully describe them as kainos. Deep inside, we began to see ourselves changing and without this long walk through the valley, it might not have happened as it has.

So, as we begin this blog would you join us in the journey of beholding kainos? New is always around the bend!

tessa

*www.stempublishing.com