The Day of Salvation

Aside from the extra snow this week, just in time for the 3^rd Sunday of Lent, this weekend brings everyone’s favorite self-inflicted penance: the changing of the clocks for daylight saving. I still hold out hope that one day our legislators will actually do something somewhat useful and bring an end to this madness, but in the meantime, you can look forward to maybe getting that hour back in November, along with several days or weeks of more difficult sleep and increased risk of heart attack or stroke in the near future. But at least we’ll have an extra hour of daylight in the evening.

It’s strange how different our perception of time can be, both in terms of what different people consider to be late or on time, and how long or short the same unit of time can seem at different points of our life. One theory I have about why time seemed to move so much more slowly when I was younger is that one year is a far greater portion of one’s life when you’re five years old than when you turn 50. Since then, I’ve also been told that part of the reason is that our brain also loses processing power as we age, so there’s just less that we pick up on and remember as time goes by, leading to same sensation of time moving “faster.” Whatever the reason, it’s fairly consistent that time seems to move faster later in life.

We’ve had quite a few funerals in the area lately. We never know when this might be our last Lent on earth. And we can let that overwhelm us or cause us anxiety, or we can let it motivate us to make full use of the opportunities that each day brings, knowing that all goes far too quickly. At the end of life, you’re not going to regret giving more of yourself to God during these next weeks of Lent, or taking opportunities to show the people around you how much you care about them.

We’re each given this one life. And today, we have today. “Behold, now is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). Whatever you’ve done before and regardless of how many days you may have left, let’s not let this opportunity pass us by, to be reconciled with God and neighbor, to repent and believe in the Gospel, to begin to live the more abundant life.