According to the weather-wise, March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Or, to rephrase that well worn saying, admittedly with less poetry but with much more alliteration, March musters much meteorological mayhem.
At least in the parts of the country where I have lived, March usually starts out cold and blustery. As the month unfolds, it is not surprising to encounter snowstorms, thunderstorms, or even both in the same week. But, roughly coinciding with the arrival of April, the weather patterns generally become less contentious as we again make our way out of Winter into Spring.
This year, the month of March contains a couple regularly scheduled changes. On March 8, we solemnly set our clocks ahead one hour to enter into the mysteries of Daylight Savings Time. In 2026, each of March’s five Sundays falls within Lent, the liturgical season that leads Christians to the festive celebration of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday morning. And if we turn the civil calendar ahead a few more pages, we will see that this July 4 marks the 250th anniversary of the United States of America declaring that it is not a collection of colonies ruled from abroad, but an independent nation.
Such temporal transitions bring to mind another cliché: Time marches on. Winter is followed by Spring. The seasons continue their cycle. Current calendars will run out of months and be replaced by new calendars with the same months and most of the same events. And as time marches on, everything changes. Well, almost everything.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17, ESV).
The italicized phrase translates a technical term used in ancient Greek astronomy. It describes the shifting shadows caused by the movement of the sun, moon, and clouds across the earth each day. As James reminds us, God is “the Father of lights,” that is, God is the creator of the planets, moons, and stars, all of which have long been used to help us keep track of time. Time – the minutes and hours, days and seasons, years, millennia, and ages – is also part of God’s good creation. And all that God creates is under God’s control.
So God is not surprised when things on earth change. Changes in the weather or in a people’s form of government do not catch God off guard. Neither do changes in our churches or our families. At some idyllic moments in our lives, you and I might wish time would stand still. But we know it won’t. We know it can’t. Only God never changes. God’s nature and will do not shift like the shadows. The God who himself is light remains our one constant in this life, and in the life to come.
All of us know that some things will change for us this year. We may even know the date of the upcoming change: a graduation or perhaps a wedding. But there also will be changes we will not see coming. Some may be welcome, others troubling.
As we move into March and on through the rest of this year, let’s encourage one another to keep our focus on our God, “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
