Jason McKnight: Spring forward, Think Better
I’m a creature of habit. Every workday, the alarm sounds at the same time. The coffee brews on schedule. The first hour of our day is in quiet: meditating, reading, orienting, caffeinating, praying, planning. Most evenings for 12 years, we’ve walked the dog after dinner. The day usually ends winding down with a show from Netflix (of which I catch the first 12 minutes, before the snoring begins in my Archie Bunker chair).
I also love the weekly rhythm. My job—local church pastor—obviously centers on a Sunday-to-Sunday cadence. I always look forward to the gathering with God’s People. The rest of the week holds a rhythmic routine too.
Mondays are staff meetings and admin. On Tuesdays the start of sermon prep for and the Men’s lunch group at Queen Street Deli. On Wednesdays we record a podcast or two. In between each of these is a full day of meetings, planning, fun, conversations. Thursday is my “Friday” as I take the following day to sabbath: I love a Friday morning brunch and walk with Susan.
Habit and routine mark my day and week. Even though pastoring gives me an infinite variety of things to do, I love the routines and habits that never change.
Until… Spring Forward. Fall Back. This little quirk in our marking of hours called “Daylight Savings Time.” The week or so after the time change, habits are a bit out of sorts. Routines (at start and end of day) take a bit of adjustment. Our 9pm “sit down for a show” now feels way too early (because it’s only 8pm body clock). What was a bright morning Quiet Time is now in pitch black darkness for a few weeks—this is when I need espresso, not just coffee!
But I can’t stop the time change. I have to live in it. Adjust to it. And I get to decide if it will bug me, trouble me, sidetrack me… or if I can make of it something to thrive through.
As I reflect on this, it seems that much of life is that same decision. Plenty of things happen to us that we cannot change or affect—at work, in family, in community, in the world. The plant will close or it won’t. The war will go well or not. Our kids will do the right thing or not. So many things creep up on us or invade our lives. We don’t plan on, wish for, nor seek out. We do not get to decide all the things that come into our lives.
But we do get to decide how they will affect us. Like Daylight Savings Time, we can say, “will this bug me, trouble me or sidetrack me? Or can I find a way to thrive through this?”
There is a little verse tucked away in the Prophet Isaiah that has kept me steady in the changes that I cannot control. I learned a song as a kid, and I think that’s why the verse is still in my head: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.” (Isaiah 26:3) That old-school, King James language simply means this: God will bring a sense of peace to the person who focuses their mind on Him.
Where we focus our minds determines how much serenity and thriving we’ll enjoy. Focus on the time change, and our outlook will be bugged. Focus on Washington, and our outlook will be troubled. Focus on our regrets, and our outlook will be sidelined. But, fill our minds with the goodness and greatness of God’s character, purposes and ways… and that will lead us to an outlook of peace, and an ability to thrive.
If you are overly troubled, vexed or sidetracked, and you don’t feel like you are thriving in life—perhaps carrying more anxiety, loneliness, concerns than you want—why not take God at his word, and focus your attention for a few minutes several times a day on the Lord: read a psalm or part of the Gospels (Jesus’ life). And, over the course of a few days, see if your thriving meter goes up, and your worry-bugged-sidetracked meter goes down.
I take that little word from Isaiah as a promise from a Promise-keeping God: He will give us more and more peace, when we fix our minds more and more on him!
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