Long before there were clocks, the Psalmist wrote: “The days of our years are three score years and ten, or even, by reason of strength, four score years…. They pass by speedily, and soon we fly away.” (Psalm 90:10) Time has a way of...
slipping by us, unnoticed. An hour at the computer, sitting behind the wheel, raking the leaves – these all steal precious minutes from our day. Keeping track of where the time goes is not just a matter of paying attention to what we do with our days, but having a clock to help us remain aware of the unyielding passage of time is today equally important to that task.
The creation of clocks, the invention of the minute hand and devising a reliable methods for calculating time at sea have filled the hours and days and even years of many men and women over the centuries. Understanding the motion of the stars, the sun and the moon paved the way for our modern instruments to tell the precise time down to mere fractions of a second. And our desire to control time has led us in this century to imagine that we can actually give (and take) hours from the day.
This weekend, as Daylight Savings Time ends, we are granted an extra hour in our day. True, it arrives when most of us are sleeping, and we will likely use it for an additional sixty minutes of rest. While seventy or even eighty years is a lengthy time to achieve tremendous goals, and a mere hour is hardly noticed on such a grand scale, still, a full hour will be loaned to us.
This Shabbat, as you hopefully take some time to relax and refresh yourself for the coming week which is a bit longer than usual, I encourage you to consider what you might do with your hour. It will pass by speedily, and soon we will all fly away.
OR CHADASH 
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