From the Pastor's Pen

Dear friends,

This is one of my favorite times of year.  It’s the one time of year we get just a little extra time.  We get one hour to be precise.  Tomorrow night we get to go around to all of our clocks and push them back one hour!  Spectacular!  I love this moment in time.

Of course it is illusory.  We don’t really get an extra hour, and in fact we loose it again in the spring.  It just feels like we get an extra hour.  I always have such plans for this extra hour.  I’m going get up an hour early and exercise each morning!  I won’t feel tired because with the time change, it will still be the same time I regularly get up.  Perfect.  I’m usually lucky to keep my plan a week.  Then inertia takes over.

Time is a funny thing.  There never seems to be just the right amount of it.  We either don’t have enough time.  Or we have too much time on our hands.  The truth is time is a gift of God.  We have been given time in which to live and love and serve God.  All of this time… is in the hands of God.

James, the Lord’s brother, in his letter at the back of the New Testament reminds us that time is in the hands of our Lord.  He writes, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”  James 4: 13 – 15.

James is right of course.  Our lives are here for a little while and we live at the gift of God.  Still it’s interesting to think about what one might do with just a little more time.  What if you had just one more hour in your week, or one more day in your month, or one more week in your year?  Would you use it for yourself?  Your family? For God?  Might you have more time for these activities than you think you have right now?  Or perhaps you might be able to make time for these priorities…  Something to think about as you turn your clocks back tomorrow night.

Peace,

Pr. Sally