October 22, 2001

ETERNAL DAYLIGHT SAVING

This is a weird time of the year. Because of the shortening of daylight hours, we feel crowded from both ends. Darkness is creeping up on our morning wake-up time, while it's also drifting back toward our driving-home-to-work time. It's closing in on us from the front and from the back.

This weekend we will make a decision by turning our clocks back an hour, ending the summer's Daylight Saving Time. It's just a little trick we play on ourselves. It allows us to get up when morning has established itself, rather than feeling it's still the middle of the night. In exchange for this sense of "sleeping in," we accept the fact that evening darkness is going to come even earlier, guaranteeing that dinner time will be experienced when day is far gone and night has set in.

We go through dramatic changes in our psychology every time we have to make this adjustment. Fall has set in, and winter is fast approaching. Even in Southern California, winter can be a depressing prospect.

When he wrote his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul was aware of the psychological power of day and night, morning and evening, light and darkness. He exhorted believers to believe and live and act with the knowledge that daylight hours are changing:

"You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Romans 13:11-14)

As Paul saw things, moral darkness was encroaching on the entire world of lost humanity. Spiritual visibility was more and more limited by the increasing power of darkness.

And yet, his God-given insight told him that the night was "far gone," in spite of the impression that it would last forever. It's time to wake from sleep, because daybreak is just around the corner. And the Day Paul sees as about to dawn is one that will last not for twenty-four hours, but for eternity. It is the Day that comes to an individual believer when the "morning star" rises in her or his heart through faith in Christ (2 Peter 1:19), initiating the everlasting light of Eternal Life.

On a grander scale, Paul is also thinking of the coming Day of the Lord, which was forecast by Old Testament prophets and reaffirmed by Jesus himself. That Day will break into human history with justice and restoration. That Day will never end, for "there will be no more night" (Revelation 22:5).

Paul's message is still a challenge for us 2000 years later:

"It's time to wake from sleep. The night is far gone; the Day is near."

Think of all these things while you're turning your clocks back one hour this Saturday night.

–Pastor George Van Alstine