The New Year arrives without universal agreement.
For some, it begins on January 1 with fireworks and resolutions. For others, the year turns with the moon, with the spring equinox, with Rosh Hashanah in the northern autumn, or with Matariki rising in the winter sky.
Even before we ask what a new year means, we are confronted with a deeper question about the nature of time.
Modern life trains us to think of time almost exclusively as ‘‘chronos’’, a Greek word from which the word ‘‘chronological’’ is derived. Chronos time is linear, measurable and quantifiable.
It is the time of clocks, timetables and countdowns. It is efficient and necessary, but also unforgiving. Miss a deadline and chronos does not pause to wait for you.
Yet many cultural and religious traditions resist the idea that time is merely something that passes.
In te ao Māori, a frequently cited image is that of walking backwards into the future, with the past in front of us while the future lies behind us, unseen.
This is a way of locating human life within whakapapa, a web of relationships extending across generations, land and community. The past is not finished business. It stands before us, calling for remembrance, responsibility and care.
Matariki, the Māori New Year, reflects this understanding. It is not marked by spectacle or instant renewal, but by remembrance of the dead, gratitude for what has sustained life and hope entrusted carefully to the coming year.
Time here is not reset but re-situated. The future is approached slowly, shaped by attentiveness to ancestors, whenua and communal wellbeing.
Judaism offers another rich challenge to a purely linear view of time. Jewish life is not organised primarily around anniversaries or milestones but around sacred rhythms.
The weekly Sabbath interrupts ordinary time, declaring that human worth is not measured by productivity. Festivals such as Passover do more than remember the past; they re-present it. The past is not behind us; it presses into the present, shaping identity and moral responsibility.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is therefore not simply a reset but a reckoning. It initiates a season of reflection and repentance that culminates in Yom Kippur.
Time here is moral and relational. The future is not something we drift into; it is something we prepare for by repairing what has been broken.
Christian understandings of time grew out of this Jewish soil but added another emphasis: eschatological time, a conviction that God’s promised future has already begun to break into the present.
In the New Testament, Jesus proclaims that ‘‘the time has come’’, not because a date has arrived, but because a new reality is unfolding.
Christian theology speaks of living ‘‘between the times’’: between what has already been given and what is not yet complete. This creates a tension-filled understanding of time.
The future presses in now, calling people to live as if a more just, reconciled and truthful world were already taking shape.
Hope, in this sense, is not mere optimism or wishful thinking. It is a disciplined way of living in the present according to a future that is made visible in the way of Jesus.
Forgiveness is practised before it is deserved. Care for the vulnerable is offered before it is rewarded. Peace is enacted before it is secure.
Other traditions echo this insight in different ways. In Islam, daily prayer punctuates time, repeatedly drawing attention away from the rush of chronos towards a deeper orientation of life.
The ancient Greeks did not just give us the word ‘‘chronos’’ to describe the passage of time. They also gave us the word ‘‘kairos’’ to describe the right time, the opportune moment, the season when action becomes possible.
The New Year is not merely a chronological event but a kairos moment: an invitation to discern what kind of time we are living in.
Some seasons call for patience, others for urgency. Some demand lament, others courage.
The risk of January 1 is that we imagine time itself will do the work for us, that turning the calendar page will somehow resolve what remains unaddressed. Chronos alone cannot heal social division, ecological damage or personal estrangement. Only kairos, the timely decision to act differently, can do that.
So perhaps the most honest New Year question is not ‘‘What will I accomplish this year?’’ but ‘‘What future am I already living towards?’’.
If the future for which one hopes is marked by justice, care and truth, then the challenge is not to wait for it, but to begin inhabiting it now.
Time will keep moving. The deeper question is whether we will learn to recognise when the future is already knocking at the door.
- Graham Redding is the Douglas Goodfellow Lecturer in Chaplaincy Studies, University of Otago.
