Central Daylight Time

CDT starts in a few hours when Sunday 0200 instantly becomes Sunday 0300 and the day has 23 hours instead of 24.

During World War Two there was talk about Daylight Savings Time when I remember being told that it was so the shipyard workers building Liberty Ships at Wainwright Shipbuilding would have more daylight hours after knocking off work for the day, time for grocery shopping and to enjoy being outside with their kids. So, I had the idea that it was new at the Time, but it was not new at all. A Wikipedia article takes it back more than a hundred years anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

Not at all, but if they must do it, instead of Sunday, they should start it on Saturday, but they start it on Sunday so people who forget, of which there's a passel of 'em, will be either too late or too early for church. That's why DST starts on Sunday, no big national economic consequence for oversleeping like there would be if it started, say, on Monday.

Still plowing through my books about Allied bombing of Germany during WW2, three books open at the moment. In regard to the Allied firebombing of Dresden in particular, I've learned that as well as extensive war industry production, the Nazi administration of Dresden specifically was so uniquely, pervasively, comprehensively evil, including cruel, sadistic brutality toward their Jewish population, that Dresden well earned it, had it coming. In fact, when the bombing started, some of the last Jews in town, that very day having received their transport order, were just outside the city, and, observing the bombing in the near distance, rejoiced when it started; and, in the confusion and chaos, some were able to escape their prescribed fate of being shipped to concentration camp and death. Of all German cities that the Allies saturation bombed to ruins, long postwar decades of uninformed outrage and sympathy for Dresden is misplaced.

One might hope and pray that humans never again treat each other with such horror, but the Russians have picked it up and are doing it to Ukraine. Russia is earning her own obliteration but which can only come at global cost because a nuclear power will not tolerate war being brought onto her own territory; therefore, as we see with Ukraine, non-nuclear powers have to be our proxies, at least as we open hostilities. And it goes from there.

What will world leaders do in the Time ahead? With wisdom and sound judgment, this could have been worked out diplomatically but now there is face to save, pride to conserve: it will be war to death and Russia will not be first to blink.

These books I'm reading as my 2023 Lenten discipline are showing me what to expect in our own streets and neighborhoods if the Ukraine war expands: blast city by city followed instantly by searing all consuming total fiery conflagration. Fire. A chief outcome of WW2 is that military infrastructure is not the target in modern warfare, it's all of us, Us and Them. We and They are the targets.

+++++++++++

Our epistle lesson for tomorrow, Sunday, March 12, 2023:

Romans 5:1-11

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person-- though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

+++++++++++++

and a petition in our Prayers of the People:

We pray for all who govern and hold authority in the nations of the world;

That there may be justice and peace on the earth.

++++++