“daylight savings time” – Pursuing Prayer

A few days ago, we had to reset all our clocks for “daylight savings time.” This is an artificial construct whereby we pretend that seven o’clock is really eight o’clock for several months in an attempt to “gain” more daylight hours. Several months from now, we will “move the clock back” to its “real” time. We talk about a “lost” hour which will be “regained” in the fall, but time is constant. There are still 24 hours in each day throughout the year. We are simply playing a game with time.

We live in a time of great changes. Whether it’s a “time change”, a change of government officials, climate changes, technological changes, and even physical changes as we age, we must learn to “roll with” and adapt to the many changes around us.

God does not change. All the changes in our life can leave us confused, frightened, agitated, and even angry. But God is constant. His love is constant. His nature does not change. His Word does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever (see Hebrews 13:8). We can trust Him to do what He has said He will do. We can rely on Him to be the same, regardless of the changes around us; regardless of the changes within us; regardless of our circumstances, our reactions, our failures, and our best efforts. Other people will let us down. Their love may be conditional or fleeting. Their promises can be broken. And the fact that we are so hurt by broken promises and sudden changes points to the reality of the unchanging God, and of our need for Him.

It can be tempting, with all the change around us, to doubt God’s faithfulness; to wonder, or even wish, that He, too, might change. Sometimes, we want Him to “bend” to fit in with our own desires, or to fit in with our society and culture. Surely, if the majority of our culture has changed, we believe that such change equals growth. We look at the past with disdain. “We just didn’t know better, then,” we say. And surely, if we know better now, God will recognize our new thoughts and attitudes as a positive change– in fact, God will change to fit our new awareness, our “better” way of thinking.

But that is not how it works. There are millions who believe that the “bad” days of slavery are behind us; others believe that the “legacy” of slavery is the greatest problem of our age. All without acknowledging that there are still millions of people who are enslaved– victims of the sex trade, victims of organ harvesting, victims of debt and war–even in our “modern” world. Abortion-on-demand still slaughters millions of human beings every year–in spite of our culture’s acceptance, and even championship of abortion as a “woman’s right.” Hundreds of thousands of young people are being mutilated because of our society’s growing belief that gender is “fluid” and God is not a good and wise creator.

While God’s unchanging nature can be a great comfort to the believer, it can be a stumbling block for those who listen to the roar of cultural voices, instead of the still small voice of the lover of their souls. And it can mean that Christians face misunderstanding and persecution as we hold God’s truths to be unchanging and unfailingly good.

I am choosing today to be grateful for God’s unchanging nature. I choose to celebrate that His promises are true; that His love never fails; that He is eternally wise; that His compassions are new every morning, and great is His faithfulness! (Lamentations 3:22-23)

Yesterday, I was working in the Toddler Room at church. The children had been playing and singing, when suddenly, our attention was caught by something happening outside our window. Hundreds of birds were gathering in the front lawn and in the parking lot of the church, resting and re-organizing for the next leg of their long migration. Birds were swooping in, landing, hopping about, lining up, changing places with other birds, circling in low flight, rearranging, and chattering before the entire flock took off and headed south. The children gathered by the window in fascination for a few minutes, before returning to their play.

afterglow art backlit birds — Photo by luizclas on Pexels.com

I was reminded of the passage in Matthew 6:

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

Ironically, yesterday was the first day of “falling back” from daylight savings time to “normal” time– literally trying to add a single hour to our lives by changing our clocks!

close up photography of wristwatch — Photo by Mat Brown on Pexels.com

The birds were not worried about clocks, or falling leaves. They were not nervously searching about for seeds or worms or bread crumbs to eat. They didn’t compare feathers or try to ostracize birds who were “different” in size or coloring or age. Each year, the birds fly hundreds of miles, over lakes and fields and cities, to get to their “winter” home. They repeat the process each spring to get to their “summer” home. God has created them with a special GPS that not only gets them where they need to go, but helps them find food and resting places along the way– including the lawn and parking lot of our church! And this is only one of thousands of flocks of birds. They arrived, rested, regrouped, and left. They didn’t collide with another incoming flock; they didn’t arrive upset or confused about the repaving that occurred this summer. They didn’t need reservations or recalculations, credit or debit cards, cell phones with wi-fi hotspots, or pilots’ licenses. God did not forget about them, abandon them, or set them up for failure.

The birds still have to face the long journey– they must gather food each day; rest each night; they must brave the very real dangers along the way. Not every bird will reach its destination. Some will be injured or become food for predators; some will succumb to bad weather or old age. Some will even be blown off course or become separated from the rest of the flock.

flock of birds flying above sky during sunset — Photo by Irina Kostenich on Pexels.com

God doesn’t promise that we will never face danger, or that we will never have to struggle. What He does promise is that we can trust Him to always be present and that He will provide all that is sufficient for us to follow Him. There is nothing we can do to add an hour to our life– and nothing we can do to erase, amend, or alter His Love for us!

Tag: “daylight savings time”

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