Are you adjusting to the time change? What a strange concept daylight saving time is. What do we store daylight in, ... jars? That sounds like a grand idea -- in the deep of winter or after an endless week of rain, we could break open a few jars and bask in the glow of saved daylight. But we don’t really save daylight. We readjust the hours on our clocks to better fit our schedules and save energy.

Yet, the sun rises and sets on its courses without our permission. The plant and animal kingdoms are not affected by our need to adjust the day’s hours. Plants that open with the sun do so whether it is called 7 o’clock or 8 o’clock. Nocturnal creatures don’t watch the clock to know when to go about their business.

I remember (barely) when President Johnson proposed standardizing the observance of daylight saving time. I met some potters in Homer, Alaska, who refused to adjust their clocks, saying they would keep ‘earth’ time. However, I imagine they would still have to wait an extra hour to go to the bank!

Our lives have so many competing rhythms: from the pull of the tides, the changing of the seasons, and the phases of the moon to the cycle of the school calendar, the quick beat of the work week, and the drone of the scheduled chores. It is a symphony of percussion jazzed up with vacation schedules, football seasons (preseason, season, post-season, the draft, training) baseball seasons, anyball seasons.

Yet, through it all the earth spins on its axis circling the sun. And God’s love for us, even more dependable than the sun’s rising in the east, continues to bless us. In this season of budding trees and flowers, thank God for God’s faithfulness. As this season of Lent draws to an end, thank God for the timely hope of blessed forgiveness and the timeless hope of Easter.

Karen Pollan

(P.S. one thing I do like very much about daylight saving time... the clock in my car is right again!)

http://www.salemfirstpres.org/msgs/pp080316pf.htm

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