Monday Morning

I woke up asleep this morning. It had been a long weekend.

One voice in my head immediately began telling me “You don’t have to get up. You worked hard yesterday; you had a meeting most of the day Saturday. Roll over, go back to sleep for awhile. You deserve it.”

The other voice started out less clearly. This voice acknowledged that it had indeed been a busy weekend. This was not the expected workaholic voice, however. It did not start laying out a list of things I really ought to get done today. Nor did it begin to criticize me for thinking I could sleep in.

This other voice simply reminded me that my days go better, and that my life is both more productive and more peaceful, when I get up and get going.

I had slept long enough to wake up without an alarm. Though I wasn’t sure I felt well rested, I began to remember that on days that I just get up and start moving, within an hour or less I feel wide awake, totally alive, and ready to face the world.

Sometimes our spiritual lives are much like my morning started today. We think our two options are either avoid all the issues or jump in to things as though everything has to be done today. If we stumble, we retreat back under our spiritual blankets, roll over, and dream of starting again tomorrow.

I truly believe that what God has in mind for us is neither rolling over and ignoring life nor pressing ourselves to be spiritual redwoods by the end-of-the-day. What God wants of us and for us is that we simply give him this day, and having done that, we step into the day knowing we are not in it alone.

Some days we have to remind ourselves of this before we can get out of bed. This is going to be a good day!