Lynne Baab

Praying about the flow of time: The equinox

Lynne Baab • Tuesday March 18 2025

Imagine you are in the wilderness with no pen, pencil, paper, or electronic devices. In this imaginary scenario, you have plenty of food, so don’t worry about that. You’re in the wilderness for a very long time. Months and years flow by. How would you mark the passage of time? Maybe you would use a rock to scratch a line on a stick each day.

As time passes, you would be increasingly aware of nature’s way of marking time. You would see the moon change from a sliver to half to full and then back again. You would notice that the rising and setting of the sun moves to different places along the horizon. If your wilderness location is in the Northern Hemisphere above the Tropic of Cancer at 23 degrees north, you would notice that the most northern sunrise and sunset locations correspond with the weather getting significantly warmer. The southernmost sunsets and sunrises happen in colder weather. If you are in the Southern Hemisphere, south of the tropic of Capricorn at 23 degrees south, you would notice the opposite. The northernmost sunrise and sunset location would correspond with warming weather.

If you were located between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, in the area we call the tropics, you wouldn’t notice much change in temperature associated with the movement of sunrise and sunset. As years pass, you might see patterns in the frequency of storms corresponding with where the run rises and sets.

On March 20, at 2:01 a.m. in my time zone here in Seattle, the sun will be exactly between the northernmost and southernmost locations of sunrise and sunset. We call that moment the equinox. For us in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the spring or vernal equinox. For my readers in England, the equinox is on the 20th at 10:01 a.m. For readers in the Southern Hemisphere, this equinox is the fall equinox. In New Zealand, the fall equinox this year is March 20 at 10:01 p.m.

I want to highlight two very different celebrations related to this equinox.

In Iran, a solar calendar has been used for almost a millennium, with New Year’s Day, Nowruz, celebrated on the Northern Hemisphere spring equinox. Here are some excerpts from Wikipedia’s long entry on Nowruz:

“The roots of Nowruz lie in Zoroastrianism, and it has been celebrated by many peoples across West Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Black Sea Basin, the Balkans, and South Asia for over 3,000 years. In the modern era, while it is observed as a secular holiday by most celebrants, Nowruz remains a holy day for Zoroastrians, Bahais, and Isma’ili Shia Muslims. . . . Customs for the festival include various fire and water rituals, celebratory dances, gift exchanges, and poetry recitations, among others.”

Nowruz in Farsi means “new day,” and the celebration of a fresh start is common in the New Year’s celebrations I have written about in recent months: the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and the Chinese or Lunar New Year. Like Jewish people and those of Chinese descent, Iranians and others who celebrate Nowruz have many food traditions that symbolize a fresh start, rebirth, and health.

A second festival related to the spring equinox is Earth Day, which has been celebrated on April 20 since 1970 but was proposed for the spring equinox in 1969. I’ll write more about the history of Earth Day in mid-April, but I want to mention some of the reasons for proposing the equinox as the day to celebrate it. The equinox is a day of equality. Every place on Earth has 12 hours of daylight and 12 of darkness. Many of our environmental problems cross national boundaries, affecting oceans, land masses, and the atmosphere. We have ecological problems equally affecting all dwellers on Earth, and we need world-wide strategies. In addition, since the equinox is rooted in the movement of the sun and Earth, this day made sense as a choice for Earth Day. Since there are two equinoxes each year, some advocates hoped we might celebrate Earth Day twice a year as a sign of the significance of caring for the environment. April 20 was chosen in the United States for a mundane reason. It fit more easily with the public school schedule in the early 1970s!

We can certainly choose to remember God’s call to care for the Earth when the equinox happens this week.

Creator God, we pause to praise you for the harmonious and rhythmical movements of the sun, stars, moon, and Earth. We praise you for the seasons and the beauty of the plants and flowers unique to each part of the year. On the equinox, as the Earth seems to pause at a moment of balance, we pray for balance and harmony in our lives and in our countries. We pray for health and well-being for all creation. And we join with people all around the world who are celebrating Nowruz, a New Year with a fresh start. We acknowledge that you are the God of fresh starts. Thank you. 

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Next week: Why Lent matters. Illustration by Dave Baab: Lake Hawea sunset, New Zealand.

Some posts you might like:

• Growing in thankfulness
• The good versus the perfect
• Creative prayer: Trees

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Lynne M. Baab, Ph.D., is an author and adjunct professor. She has written numerous books, Bible study guides, and articles for magazines and journals. Lynne is passionate about prayer and other ways to draw near to God, and her writing conveys encouragement for readers to be their authentic selves before God. She encourages experimentation and lightness in Christian spiritual practices. Read more »

Lynne is pleased to announce the release of her two 2024 books, both of them illustrated with her talented husband Dave's watercolors. She is thrilled at how good the watercolors look in the printed books, and in the kindle versions, if read on a phone, the watercolors glow. Friendship, Listening and Empathy: A Prayer Guide guides the reader into new ways to pray about the topics in the title. Draw Near: A Lenten Devotional guides the reader to a psalm for each day of Lent and offers insightful reflection/discussion questions that can be used alone or in groups. 

Another recent book is Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian  Life, available in paperback, audiobook, and for kindle. Lynne's 2018 book is Nurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care for the Twenty-First Century, and her most popular book is Sabbath-Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest (now available as an audiobook as well as paperback and kindle). You can see her many other book titles here, along with her Bible study guides.

You can listen to Lynne talk about these topics: empathy, bringing spiritual practices to life. Sabbath keeping for recent grads., and Sabbath keeping for families and children.

Lynne was interviewed for the podcast "As the Crow Flies". The first episode focuses on why listening matters and the second one on listening skills. 

Here are two talks Lynne gave on listening (recorded in audio form on YouTube): Listening for Mission and Ministry and Why Listening Matters for Mission and Ministry.

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