This weekend it wasn’t just a ‘what if?’

Our clocks went back and suddenly, we were gifted an extra hour in bed.

“What if you were given an extra hour?”

“Sleep!” is apparently the answer.

That’s how it’s always been billed, every year. “The clocks go back this weekend. You get an extra hour in bed. Brilliant!”

But who says that extra hour must be spent in bed? And who forgot to send that memo to the hundreds of thousands of children who got up at 6am instead of 7?

That we’re programmed to spend the extra hour in bed says a lot about our levels of sleep deprivation and inability to slow down. Every year, just once a year, we’re nationally encouraged to relax a little bit longer.

But what if each of us planned in advance to use the extra hour for something magnificent? Something that we wouldn’t usually make the time for, but something that lights us up?

What if we didn’t just spend it in bed and we actually got up and were brilliant?

What would that look like for you? What would you choose to do?

What if we play pretend and choose to do that magnificent thing every day?

Wibbily wobbly, timey wimey. We don’t suddenly ‘find’ an extra hour every autumn. Time just is and we manipulate the stuff to fit it. We manipulate the clocks. It’s a national manipulation that everyone is in on.

But what if we made a conscious choice about what’s important and manipulate our day to make it fit in?

Time is scattered throughout the bible. It started with God creating time via day and night and from there, time is used within the context of events and seasons through to the infamous ‘There is a time for everything’ speech in Ecclesiastes.

Time, according to a quick glimpse at the bible it seems, is this never-ending stuff but we’re also reminded that it’s fleeting.

So how about we treat each hour as the precious stuff it is and make a conscious choice about what we’re going to do, who we’re going to do it with and where we’re going to do it?

And I’m not talking about filling every hour with busy.

I spent my extra hour yesterday sleeping and it was delightful. It’s just about being more conscious, deciding what’s really important to us, and making sure we allow time for that every day.

You in?