Time is Time

            Like most of you, for about a month, I’ve been rising while it is still dark outside.  I don’t like that and never have, even as a boy when I rose at 4:00 A.M. to deliver newspapers. Saturday the fifth of November, I’ll set my clocks back an hour ("fall back in in fall") so that I may rise Sunday morning after dawn.  The flip side is that it will be dark Sunday shortly after 5:00 P.M.  The light I gain in the morning will be taken from me the evening. 

            The arrangement is called Daylight Savings Time, a system devised to give us more light in the evening during the Summer.  The truth, of course, is that we don’t “gain” any daylight.  We will have the same amount of daylight no matter where we set our clocks.  We can’t gain any daylight and we can’t gain any additional time.  We will still have twenty four hours each day. 

            We will adjust our lives to the daylight we have, and we will adjust our hectic lives to the twenty four hours we are given. (Wouldn’t it be great if we could manufacture another hour each day!)  We just have to do the best we can with the time we are given.  

            This is also true of the days of life we are given.  We only have a certain number, even though we don’t know that number.  It behooves us to use each one wisely and to the fullest.  That is why Paul instructs the Ephesians and us, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”  (Ephesians 5:15-16)

Grace and peace.