Time Change

OK, you know how I love the time change in the spring. Moving to Daylight Savings Time means one more hour of evening daylight for all of those outdoor activities that I enjoy. Church staff members know that I believe that Time Change Sunday (which is, by the way, this Sunday) should be a national holiday.

This might be a good time to remind you once more to change your clocks when you go to bed on Saturday. You need to “spring forward” in order to get up and be in church on time. Yes, you might lose an hour’s sleep, but just focus on how wonderful Sunday evening is going to be.

As much as I like the time change, I’ve been thinking about an angle on this that is pretty interesting. When we change our clocks we don’t really alter reality at all, only our perception of reality. The sun doesn’t know that we’ve changed our clocks. The earth doesn’t alter its rotation around the sun, nor is there one single second more daylight than there would be if we had not changed our clocks. And yet we consistently speak of having “one more hour of daylight,” and our daily routines are, in fact, changed somewhat. Speaking for myself, I’m happier and have an extra skip in my step.

I have said on many occasions that, when it comes to the major, life-changing events in life, we usually have little control. The phone call in the night, the doctor’s diagnosis, the response from the “guy or girl of our dreams”…these are all circumstances that we can’t fully control. What we can control is our response to all those circumstances. Just as we can choose to set our clocks ahead by one hour, we can choose how we view the reality that confronts us. The freedom to do that is extraordinarily powerful. If you don’t think so, just consider how the time change alters the way you live your life without altering reality.

One more reminder: when you go to bed Saturday night, set your clocks for Daylight Savings Time. And while you are doing it, say a little prayer of thanksgiving to God for the power to choose to live in the light rather than the darkness, with love and forgiveness rather than hate and blame, with style and grace rather than bitterness and regret. The ability to choose how to perceive the reality that surrounds us is one of God’s greatest gifts.

Don Underwood