While I mostly like Daylight Saving Time, I think it goes a bit too long. It seems odd to me that we have the sun rising after 7 am and so many people are getting up in the dark while we are so far from winter. If you look at the start and finish dates of Summer Time, we end it about a month later than we should.

In times gone by, each town or village ran to their own time zone. There might be only one clock in a locality, probably on the church. The local time was 12 noon when the sun was at its highest point. The advent of trains and timetables meant that a standard time in a county or region had to be adopted, otherwise timetables could not be worked out.

The internet age accelerated things further so that we now synchronise time to millionths of a second to make possible these instantaneous transactions of data. When the natural world drifts too far from internet time, a “leap second” has to be inserted into the atomic clocks that govern it all.

As opposed to this chronological idea of time, the ancients has a concept of “appointed time.” This was the right time. We have all had those experiences when everything just came together at the right time; what was impossible a month ago suddenly comes to pass. In farming, sowing and harvest are appointed times, determined by seasons and weather. A baby’s birth is an appointed time that nobody can control.

The Bible tells us that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement.” You and I don’t know when we will die, when that “appointed time” is. Wisdom suggests that we should prepare for death well in advance.

One thing that every person should do is to make sure that they are ready to stand before God. The Bible tells us that we are all sinners, but also that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself.” Those who are followers of Jesus have nothing to fear from death or from judgement, because He has paid the price.

It is one thing to gt the clocks right. Let’s make sure our relationship with God is also right.