Awaken the Dawn

During the fall, I began trying to get up early each morning so I could have a longer amount of time for prayer and reading my Bible. It is always a struggle to do a quiet time after my son is awake and moving, and the many interruptions always decreased the time I had available and increased the effort it took to consistently study. I realize that trying to start new habits while eight months pregnant is not my best idea. Still, it has been fruitful and the mornings I can drag myself out of bed are good ones. It also helps to treat myself to something yummy to eat along with my morning cup of tea—zucchini bread and Eggo waffles have been the latest winners.

However, when you are out of practice on something, it always takes time to get back into it and hit a good groove. This was definitely true for me, and as I look back through my prayer journal, there was a lot of stuff I needed to get off my chest. Some mornings, all I wrote were complaints about how life was going, and prayers that God would hear me and change something, do something, give me rest, or at least let me survive the week. Not much in the way of worship and thanksgiving. But about mid-November, things began to change. I would have small sentences of things I was thankful for: a good meeting with a friend, a productive afternoon of writing, a successful day of parenting my son, a good night sleep, or even just getting everything off my to do list. Then there began to be phrases of worship in there too as I began to move past my problems and see the good God I was talking to: praise for my work and responsibilities, praise for how He created the world, praise for the journey He is taking our family on, and that His plans are sure and good, and just praise because God is good.

Finally, one morning, I came to Psalm 108. Verses 1-5 say this:

My heart, O God, is steadfast;

I will sing and make music with all my soul.

Awake, harp and lyre!

I will awaken the dawn.

I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;

I will sing of you among the peoples.

For great is your love, higher than the heavens;

your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;

let your glory be over all the earth.

Previous to reading this Psalm, I had been lamenting that I didn’t feel like I was making any progress in life apart from making myself more tired by getting up an hour earlier. But this Psalm praises God first thing in the morning. It is not a quiet time, it is a time of loud worship and music and singing because God’s love is great, higher than the heavens and His faithfulness reaches to the skies. How can we not praise God? The Psalmist affirms that the sun will not sleep in because his loud worship will awaken the dawn.

This ended up being one of those mornings when I truly felt God’s presence and love. Not because He answered my prayers for rest, but just because He was there.

After reading Psalm 108, I leaned back to stretch my back and look out the window, and before me was a stunning sunrise. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth. And so, for those few minutes as the sun climbed higher over the horizon and houses, I watched an truly felt as though God were reminding me that He is in control, even when I am out of control. Then, with the light of day upon me, I had to get my son up, and get the day going and get busy with everything that needed to be done.

That’s how life goes, isn’t it? We don’t necessarily get the rewards we want for doing something good every time we do it. Over the past several weeks that I have been getting up early (sometimes successfully, sometimes not), I have never seen a sunrise like this again. Not with all the colors. It’s usually just a gradual brightening of the day. And believe me, I do keep looking. God is not a vending machine; he doesn’t just hand out rewards for every little thing we do, and anytime we make the effort. This is why faithfulness is so darn hard sometimes. God is pleased by our efforts to be faithful and righteous and to learn more about Him, but He also wants our trust and faith in Him to mature and grow, and not just stay rooted in the mundane and little things. We have to trust God with the big stuff too, the stuff that is far out of our control and ability to understand. But, we can start with small things: a sentence of thanksgiving, a word of worship, and these things will grow and develop into solid anchors that hold us rooted in God when the worst storms come.

This blog is called His Splendor Like the Sunrise because we need to remember that the dawn comes whether we are there to greet it with worship or not. The sun rises whether we are thankful for its light or dread the morning. God is good, and He is pouring out His goodness upon us whether we notice it or not—but life is more fun if you notice it. May you know His goodness every new morning, and be moved into loud, joyful worship with the first rays of light in the morning.