BST

It’s that time of the year again, where the clocks go back an hour, and you get that extra time in bed, to give you the long lie in you deserve. No excuses for being late for church then, or even missing it! It feels good to go round the house putting the clocks back that hour on Saturday night, after all who is going to stay up to 2am to do it? It’s one of the few good signs of winter approaching. (For our UK readers you should turn your clocks back at 2am on Sunday 28 Oct, and our US and Canadian readers a week later.)

Wouldn’t it be good to be able to turn time back for longer than an hour though? How about turning the clock back so that we can reclaim our youth, or maybe lost health and strength? How about going back to a time when we found our life’s love and reliving the moment you tied the knot and got married? We could go back to the birth of our children, and their first steps, their first birthday or Christmas! If only, if only... there are so many good times we could return to, if only we could turn the clocks back.

However many good times we could go back to, there are those times we would want to change. Those decisions we need to put right. The angry word to our best friend. A great personal wrong we need to rectify. To go back to be in a place we have regretted we missed, at a time we were needed. Unfortunately, we cannot go back to put great sins right, and the consequences of our past sins will always be with us, but I have great news! We might be able to remember them with regret, but if we have asked God to forgive our past sins, He has forgotten them already. As quick as that!

I was reminded of the following by a dear friend recently: The past is the past, and we can’t change it. The future is unknown, but we have the gift of ‘now’. That is why it is called ‘the present’, so let us all make good use of the time we have right now, and make it count for our tomorrows, and let our gracious God deal with forgetting about our past. After we have repented and asked for forgiveness, that’s His job, and He does it well. So let’s take our responsibility seriously for our ‘present’ as a gift from God, and not abuse His love, grace or forgiveness.

Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 2 Cor 6:2 NKJV