I am not naturally a morning person. It is so much easier for me to sleep in the morning and stay up at night than it is to conform to the standards of society and work schedule and go to bed before the sky begins to lighten before dawn and rise early. I know that they say that the early bird gets the worm, but let's not forget the early worm gets eaten. Not too awfully long ago I wrote an Unshackled Moment, March 12 ~ More Better, about how I'd gotten a desire to start rising early to spend time with God and the progress I had made in that area, along with how Daylight Savings Time had messed me up.
Well, I'm in worse shape in this area now than I was when I lost an hour to the foolishness of DST, and I'm ashamed to say that not only are things worse, but they're worse because of me and me alone.
Due to too much time off because of injury and rain in the last couple of months, I have had the opportunity to sleep in too often. Staying in bed has become easy again, as has hitting that blasted snooze button. It has begun effecting my day as I've had to rush through my writing and my morning reading more than once, or even put if off till later in the day a couple of times, because I stayed in bed too long and had to be somewhere. I don't like the way I feel when I rush through my time with God in the morning. I have a feeling God doesn't like the way that it feels either.
Yesterday I learned that in the upcoming summer hours I will likely have to be starting my work day earlier, which will mean starting my worship day earlier. This would have been an adjustment without having slipped, but now I am having to struggle to get back to where I was two months ago. This morning I set myself to get up and not hit the snooze button more than once. Well, I didn't hit the snooze button more than once, because I didn't hit it at all. I turned off the alarm. By grace I checked the time a little later and realized what I had done and that I'd effectively snoozed twice. I got up and thanked God for progress not perfection. I'm still up about 45 minutes earlier than most days recently.
In addition to not being a morning person, I am not naturally a Godly person. I am selfish and want to live according to my will rather than God's. That's my natural bent. And guess what, while some reading this may be naturally morning people, none are naturally Godly people. Some of us are more naturally nice and obedient than others, but none of us are naturally Godly. It's just not in us, which is one of the reasons that we all need a Savior. So it takes a desire to have relationship with God and a lot of grace for any of us to walk with Him.
But we need to beware of our natural rhythms and the spiritual snooze button. We may cruise alone doing pretty well for a while, and then for whatever reason, the work God has us doing takes less of our effort for a little while. We don't have to spiritually get up as early to prepare. If we're not careful, we can slip right back into our old routines so easily. And then when a part of us responds to the call to do it differently, to live according to His will, we can start hitting that spiritual snooze button. I hear the call. I hear the alarm, and I will respond. I know I need to. Just five more minutes of doing my thing first OK? Snooze. Five more minutes. If we're not careful, we can five more minutes ourselves into trouble and pressure and stress that is totally unnecessary and has nothing to do with God's plan other than our part in putting it off.
The Holy Spirit calls for time to get moving and warns of the dangers of staying asleep in self, and we just groan and hit the button and cry for five more minutes. That is dangerous enough, but if we aren't careful, if we react in selfishness without thinking, we can turn off the alarm rather than just snooze. The more you ignore the still small voice of the spirit, the harder it becomes to hear. That's a dangerous place to be, and requires a lot of grace to get out of that place of deafness. It may go against every natural instinct we have, in fact, it always does, but it's easier to just respond the first time, every time when the Spirit calls than to calculate how long we can snooze in self before rising to life.
Abba, help me not to snooze away my life and my time with You either in the physical or the spiritual world. Give me the grace to be quick to respond when You calll. Don't let me play with the snooze button of self. Amen.
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