This past Sunday, most people in America “Sprang Forward.” It’s a silly tradition, which began as a joke told by Benjamin Franklin that too many people with power over the lives of others took too seriously. Now here we are. Two hundred or so years later, we’re still moving those clocks back and forth, forth and back, every Spring and every Autumn. As I’ve gotten older I find it takes me a week or two just to get my internal clock in sync with my external ones. It “feels” earlier than it is on the clock.
Regularly, we’re told “they’re going to do away with it…” but until it happens, it’s just a pipe dream.
Personally, my inclination is to grumble and complain about anything that changes my status quo, but, in keeping with my New Year’s Resolution to force myself to find something positive to say about an otherwise bad situation, here goes…
Springing forward means longer days, which means more time awake. I’m reminded of the Pslamist who said “The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence” (Psalm 115:17). We often think of dead saints as being “up there singing and praising God!” but the Bible often paints a picture of departed children of God as being asleep, still, and silent, awaiting the Day of Resurrection. In the Old Testament, in particular, there wasn’t so much talk of “leaving this world to go to a better place.” It was “we live here, so let’s use our time here to praise and serve God.” Christianity, as Jesus described it throughout His ministry, was not so much about escaping this physical world, as it was seasoning the world around us with the salt of righteousness (Matthew 5:13) and the light of godliness (Matthew 5:14-16).
A little extra daylight is a reminder that we are alive to appreciate that light, and have a call from God to shine His light wherever we go. The light will not always be with us; we must do what we can with it, not just before the “Fall Back” time change comes again, but before the end of all things, when the light of our spiritual work is extinguished for good (John 9:4).
~Matthew