Daylight Savings Time (DST): I dread it every year, grumbling through the week before the clocks spring forward. Not only does DST increase health risks, disrupting sleep patterns for 300 million people, but scientific research has questioned the very rationale for which it was enacted: conserving energy.
So, I am justified in my complaining (I tell myself), which grows stronger the closer DST gets.
Then I came across a quote from Billy Graham, reminding me of a truth I know but easily ignore. “Never forget,” he said, ” that God isn’t bound by time the way we are.”
By lamenting the time change, I was programming myself to feel tired and irritable—negative emotions I was stockpiling until launch day, March 10, when I would release them, proving that I was right in my complaints about the time change’s adverse effects.
But God, Billy Graham reminds us, doesn’t work any differently because it’s DST. The time change doesn’t rouse God an hour earlier. He is up early anyway. God doesn’t wring his hands in despair, peering from heaven, wondering how he will get things back on the divine plan, what with the hour’s leaping forward.
We know this, of course, if we stop long enough to think about it. God is not subject to the time zones that circle the planet. He is above and beyond them. He can be active at a prayer meeting in Bangalore, India, and comfort a grieving mother in Montana while guiding a wayward believer in Australia.
God is what theologians call “transcendent.” He is above and beyond all he created. David could declare, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). The heavens God created are not contingent on our time zones or changes.
Yet God is with us in the nitty gritty moments of each day. In another place, David took comfort that in our pain, God is “close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).
And thousands of years after King David’s words, Simon Peter wrote, “With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8).
In another place, Moses prayed, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).
Looking at the calendar, I focused on that day: March 10. Beneath the date were the bold letters: “DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME BEGINS.”
I smiled.
This time, I’m getting ahead of DST.
I’m going to set my mind before I set my clocks.
I’m going to remind myself, before closing my eyes on Saturday, March 9, that the same God who watches over me while I sleep will awaken the dawn on his schedule, even when all my digitized timepieces automatically leap forward one hour.
And when I awaken, God willing, after thanking the Lord that he has restored my soul, I will spring forward, turn to my ever-patient wife, and proclaim, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).
And I will step into the day rejoicing in a God whose loving-kindness isn’t affected by time regulations to fall back or spring forward.
Then, I will go about my happy DST day with a smile of contentment and a heart full of gratitude for each moment of that God-given day.