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Daylight Saving Time
This week, we adjusted our clocks for Daylight Saving Time. It is a small act of surrender. One brief, ordinary hour disappeared overnight. But in that loss, we made room for light.
It is fitting that Daylight Saving Time regularly falls in the middle of Lent.
Lent is not merely a season of self-denial; it is a season of reorientation. On Ash Wednesday, we heard, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The ashes marked us with mortality, but they also marked us with hope. The same God who formed us from dust also breathes life into us.
When we “spring forward,” we feel the cost immediately, especially at the 8 a.m. service. We are tired. Disoriented. The light lingers longer in the evening, but it takes time for our bodies to adjust. Lent works much the same way. We give up familiar comforts, certain foods, habits, or distractions. We notice what we have lost.
But this loss is not punishment. In the Book of Common Prayer, we are invited to “the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (p. 265). These practices are not about spiritual productivity. They are about making room.
Daylight Saving Time does not create additional light; it simply repositions us to receive light that was always there. The sun was already shining. We have only adjusted our clocks to live more fully in this light. Lent does not manufacture God’s grace. God’s mercy in Jesus Christ is constant and unwavering. What changes is our posture. We turn. We repent. We realign our lives so that we can walk more attentively in the light of Christ.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus declares, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). The light does not flicker with the seasons of our faith. It shines steadily, even when our spirits feel dim. Lent is our gentle “springing forward,” a deliberate shift away from the shadows of distraction and toward the radiance of Christ’s presence.
We lose an hour. We give things up. But what we gain is far greater: longer evenings filled with light, and an openness to the resurrection dawn.
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