This past Sunday was a great day, perhaps the best I’ve had in quite a while. There were lots of reasons for it. Worship was great – I always love All Saints Sunday – and we had a full house at 11 a.m. We currently have several new families visiting the church, which is always good news. And the dedication of the Ash Lane Memorial Bell Tower was special indeed! To hear that bell ringing as we named the saints who went before us in the past year, well, it gave me chills.

Those are some of the reasons Sunday was great, but not the primary one.  You see, something amazing happened in the middle of the night Saturday after I went to bed. At 2 a.m. sharp, the official time moved back an hour, effectively giving all of us an extra hour of sleep. It happened in the middle of the night officially, but in reality I observed it much earlier. By 8 p.m. Saturday, I had already turned back all the clocks downstairs that had to be set manually. I wanted to make sure my coffee pot kicked on at the right time early the next morning. From Saturday evening on, I was already thinking in terms of the new time. It feels like 9, but no – it’s only 8, and so on. I didn’t actually get an extra hour of sleep, truth be told. I usually try to get in bed by 10 on Saturday night because the alarm goes off at 4 Sunday morning. But that night I didn’t go to bed until 11, because – my head reminded me – it was really only 10. So I slept for the same amount of time I usually do.

But you couldn’t tell it by me. Sunday morning I felt great! That “extra hour” of sleep was just what the doctor ordered. It always is.

Ah, Daylight Savings Time. I have dealt with it all of my life; all of us have. Since 1918 the United States has observed the practice of setting the clocks ahead one hour as Spring approaches and then moving them back to Standard Time in late October or early November. The rationale seems simple enough. Because of the earth’s axial tilt and its journey around the sun, sunrise and sunset and the amount of daylight we experience vary with the seasons. But our schedules don’t change. We still go to work at the same time, go to school at the same time, come home at the same time, etc. So Daylight Savings Time was created to adjust the daylight hours to fit our constant schedules. We move ahead an hour as the days lengthen and sunrise and sunset move later in the 24-hour cycle. Later in the year, as the days shorten and the movement of the sun moves earlier in the day, we move back an hour.

That’s what happened Saturday night. And what a difference it made on Sunday! Except it really
didn’t make a difference at all. The truth is it’s all in my head. I know it is. It doesn’t matter how much sleep I actually get, I still know I “lost” an hour every Spring. I go to bed grumbling about it, expecting to wake up feeling like I lost an hour, and inevitably I do. I complain about it all day on Sunday and I feel lousy – mostly because I expect to. And the opposite is true in the Fall.

That’s the power of expectation. It tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we expect to feel a certain way, we probably will. If we expect conflict with a particular person, chances are it will happen. So it sort of begs the question of what we expect from our faith. How do we expect our relationship with Christ to change us? What do we expect to happen when we choose to follow  Jesus? What do we expect when we enter into worship?

Each week during worship I try to welcome those who are with us for the first time. I try not to say the same thing each week, but usually it is something along the lines of “I hope you find this not only a warm and welcoming place to worship God, but that you will experience the risen Christ in the midst of our worship.” But I wonder, do all of us who call Ash Lane home, do we come in with that expectation? Do we walk in the door expecting Christ to meet us there?

Experience would suggest that expectation will play a huge role in what eventually happens during that hour. So what is your expectation? To sing some familiar songs, see some good friends, maybe hear a good sermon? Or do you expect to encounter Jesus? Do you expect to come face to face with the risen Christ?

Just food for thought before we gather again.