The Golden Age of Kairos

The Opportunity Century is making millionaires out of kids. And the rest of us, if we're not trying to make money, are taking advantage of new technological opportunities to become beautiful and brilliant. The apostle Paul, however, weighs in with his own version of what it means to kink the kairos.

They're young. They're hot. They're rich.

Don't hate 'em. Join 'em.

That's the advice of one economist looking at the growing legions of young millionaires. They're enterprising entrepreneurs who wanted into the money game, who saw an opportunity, mixed in a little passion and energy, and then ran with it - all the way to the bank. They're people like Walter Latham, 28, of Latham Entertainment with sales of $35 million in 1999. Or, David Watkins, 31, of Icon Lifestyle Marketing, with sales of $10 million in 1999. They didn't go on a quiz show to make a million, they didn't marry - or bury - a millionaire. They made their money the old-fashioned way: They got lucky.

Not exactly. Although they may have never read Ephesians, they understood intuitively the lynchpin of today's text: "making the most of the time" (v. 16). The expression recalls the ancient Greek distinction between chronos (chronological time) and kairos (the moment). These opportunity-grabbers know that chronos is the...