Time Change

Time Change

Today is the day we change our clocks.  In the spring we move our clocks forward one hour for Daylight Saving Time.  In the fall our clocks will “recover” the hour lost in the spring as we move our clocks back one hour.

It’s always a big deal at our house to make this adjustment because we have too many clocks.  Of course we have our watches, by which we regulate our day so we will arrive at appointments or pick up the kids or go to work at the right time.  I know our watches are necessary but I’m not sure that we don’t get too carried away with “being on time.”

Then we have clocks by the bed.  Actually my husband and I each have a clock on our side of the bed no less.  We seldom ever set the alarm on those clocks so I’m not sure why we need them.  I guess we use them so we know what time it is when we wake up in the middle of the night.  I mean after all, it I go to bed at 10:22 p.m., I want to know when I wake up at 1:35 a.m. that I’ve only been asleep a few hours so I can spend the next 30 minutes thinking about how I must have been asleep much longer than that!  Or, even better, if I wake up and my clock tells me I only have about another hour to sleep before its time to get up, I need to be able to fret about how I really need to get back to sleep.  Now who needs that extra stress to begin the day?

Then, of course, there is the clock on the stove which is totally unnecessary.  If I’m cooking supper (which doesn’t happen every night) then I obviously know its supper time.  I really don’t need to know the exact time because seldom is my husband home to eat “on time” anyway!  If I’m not cooking supper then I’m not looking at the stove wondering what time the stove will cook something on its own.  Now the microwave is another matter.  I need the timer on the microwave to tell me when three minutes has elapsed, but I don’t really need a clock, just a timer that beeps when it’s time to take out food.

The clock that is the most reliable and is used the most is the one on my cell phone.  It changes itself automatically and is tied to the “mean” time or the world’s time or something beyond my control, whatever that is!  On my cell phone I lost my hour in the spring and I’ll get it back tonight with no effort on my part.  Convenient isn’t it?

Which brings me to the point of my story.  As I have pondered this process this morning I realized my life has been a bit like Daylight Saving Time.  For about the first 20 years of my life it seemed like my clock was being “set back.”  Would I ever turn 16 and get my driver’s license, would I ever be 21?  Then sometime over the next several years, my clock began to speed up somewhat.  I really didn’t “change” my clock but all of a sudden I’d lost a year, or maybe two.  I found myself thinking my children should just be teenagers, but wait, it’s my grandchildren who are learning to drive!  Wasn’t it just a few “time changes ago” that I was learning to drive?

I’ve been known to complain about my cell phone.  With all of its conveniences, also called apps, it controls my life, with little effort from me and often without me intending to let it happen!

Have I allowed my life to spring forward at such a pace, controlled by the world or others, that I hardly know what time it really is?  Am I allowing life to “fall back” or “spring forward” and just happen with no real purpose or plan? 

God’s Word addresses this in several places.  Psalm 90 in The Message says we live for seventy years or so and with luck we might make it to eighty.  Then the question is asked, “And what do we have to show for it?  Trouble, toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard.”

Well that gets my attention since I’ve had my seventy years!  Now I don’t want to stop the clock, I don’t even want to watch the clock, but I do want to be intentional about living my days.  Verse 12 of Psalm 90 says, “Oh!  Teach us to live well!  Teach us to live wisely and well.”  God has ordained our days before even one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16), may I allow my “time” to be controlled by Him as I seek His will.

“Search me, “O God and know my heart;” test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”  Psalm 139:23-24

P.S.

As I penned the above thoughts in my Journal this morning I was reminded of something I wrote over 25 years ago. 

Time

Time doesn’t stand still for anyone,

It moves on for all of us.

We must move forward, day after day,

Until all of life is done.

Taking each day as it is,

And not for what might have been.

Not for what the future will be,
But today for today, today!