Who is in control?
It was still dark as I rolled out this morning, as we all got to/forced to "spring forward" under daylight savings. I tried to go to bed on time but losing an hour of sleep made me a little groggier than normal. In a couple weeks we will adjust our schedule and things will be back to normal I suppose.
The Bible says that the seasons are in God's hands, but mankind always tries to exert as much control as possible over nature. We move our clocks forward and backwards to make the most of the daylight, and maybe to try to prove to ourselves that we are in control of some things. The fact is of course it's all a made up thing anyways. We're not actually changing when the sun rises or the sun sets, just what time we tell our brains to think it is.
We have a way of doing that with more than just time. We tell ourselves that we're in control of things that we have no actual control over. We try to eat right and be healthy to hold off the effects of aging, but best we could maybe only slow it down a little. We think that our hard work and effort means we are in control of our families, our finances, or our future, but the truth is it is all in God's hands. The measure of control we are able to eke out gives us an inflated sense of ourselves, causing us to forget God's kindness to us day by day.
The truth is, we are in control of very little in this life. Even the people with the most money and power in this world are subject to the same forces of nature and time as the lowliest peasant. Even though we're not in control we are not left to random forces of nature. Maybe if I gained an hour of sleep last night I would feel so grumpy, but this dark morning reminds me of what we all need to know: our lives are in God's hands. And that's right where we should want them to be.
