It's almost time for a change!

I mean that literally, of course. I don't know how much you keep up on current events, but because I am in the computer business some things come to my attention faster than most people, because of the impact they have on my job. This "time" it's the time change.

See, way back in December or so I got an alert saying the US GOV was thinking about changing the day we spring forward for daylight savings. The whole concept of daylight savings was by legend an idea of Ben Franklin, and most countries in the world followed our lead. Certain rules were set up to determine when we were going to spring forward and fall back, and it could be calculated to the day for years in advance. Computers these days have this built in, and even the evil operating systems try to adjust for you when the time arrives.

But our GOV decided they couldn't leave it alone and want to improve on the experience. So this year, the time change occurs on March 11, I believe two weeks earlier than expected. That means for most of us we have to manually change the date on our computers... twice. Once on March 11, and once in April when the computer thinks it should happen and will try to change it again. Yikes! As you might expect, banks and business computers are going to get all confused. To make matters worse, Canada and Mexico have decided to switch with us, to avoid confusion. But other nations have gone bonkers in changing their dates, too. Brazil will be March 4th. Europe I think the 25th. Some nations aren't going to change at all, and others picked days that were not on weekends. So like the song says, "Does anyone really know what time it is?" You may not until about May 1st!

This is what can happen when folks deviate from the standard and everyone does whatever they think is good for them. It gets very confusing and frustrating. Don't get me wrong, I like the convenience of daylight savings, but even then I know the "real" time by subtracting an hour. This year it seems like chaos, with nations seemingly choosing at the last minute (ha ha) to switch their dates or not.

UNFORTUNATELY there are many who think the bible and salvation is also something that can be adjusted and changed at the whim of society. I don't just mean doctrinal things like chastity, honesty, integrity, or justice, I mean foundation teachings such as fasting, prayer, baptism, and repentance. These so called "old fashioned" things get relegated away in place of new thinking - live any way you want, good or evil, and in the end you get balanced and if you lean more towards good you win, and if not you just have to wait awhile and then once you've served your time to make up for your "mistakes" (can't call it sin, too negative a word) you win along with the rest of us.

I guess the point is why do we expect God to just accept whatever we decide on? You know, if I decide to set my clock back an hour and I know the sun came up at 6:00 yesterday, do you think that I would be silly enough to look at the sky at 5:00AM and tell God that he's bringing the sun up too early because I decided it wasn't time yet? If that seems crazy, then why do we think God is going to change his word, his decisions, just because we think we'd like something else instead? Some things just don't change, and the word of God is one of them.

I knew a man who got up with the sun each day and went to bed when the sun went down. He got lots of sleep in the winter, and of course less in the summer. But when the sun was up, he worked hard. He was a farmer. It didn't matter what time it was, when there was work to be done it was time to work, period. I don't know that he ever worried about a time change. But if the sun didn't come up one day, I think that would worry him. Yes indeed, we can make all the pretend time changes we want, but they mean nothing. When God makes a change, such as saying that's all, folks, it's gonna be tough to ignore that!

Randy