This coming weekend presents pastors like me with a special challenge. We must make sure that our congregation remembers to set that clock forward one hour before going to bed on Saturday evening. We must further convince them to get up and come to church even though they have lost an hour of normal sleep. In the past, I have served in churches that used special morning breakfasts, free donuts, a band and bouncy houses for the kids. In one church I served in seminary, a guy in a gorilla suit came to pass out ballons (he already had the suit), to try to entice people to remember to “spring forward”. Daylight savings time begin in Germany during World War I but was the idea of a Scottish builder, who in true Scottish frugality, thought the world was “wasting daylight” or so they say. 

There are many opponents to the practice of Daylight Savings Time. However, without it we will still have the change of seasons with Spring approaching on March 19. The days will get longer and as the book of Ecclesiastes and the old song by “The Byrds” says, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:” King Solomon or “The Teacher” lists a litany of stages of human life and activities that we repeat in life and begins with the repetitive “a time to . . .” It is almost like saying that life is something like “lather, rise, repeat” until we die. Pretty bleak. What follows are words of hope and life. “He (God) has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, He has put a sense of past and future into their minds . . .I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live . . .”

Of course, as a Christian, I believe that it is my faith and hope in Jesus Christ that truly breaks this cycle and brings new and abundant life to us. We celebrate the seasons as God brings new growth to the earth from the bleakness of winter into the glory of spring. This reminds us of the new life offered by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. How appropriate it is that both the Passover and Easter are so close to the rebirth of life on earth known as spring.

So, spring forward, find a place to worship, celebrate the return of life and growth and thank God for the change of seasons as we move forward to Easter! 

(Steve Berger is pastor of First Methodist Church Minden, a Global Methodist Church. He is the husband of Dianne, his partner in ministry, they have two adult sons, a dachshund, and love living in Minden.)