2024-07-03 A Meditation on the Early Hour

“2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.” (Col 4:2 ESV)

The excitement of getting up in the morning revolves around a dozen scales on which life becomes more blurred, tired, compromised; that early quiet time is ours precisely because the “noise” of the world around us is subdued; we are joining a conviviality of those in other time zones whose prayers we know are ongoing, and somehow that knowledge informs our own prayers. Somehow all of us know a certain trauma of existence, that is quieter in those hours purely owned by the one who wakes up to it.

It is the dilettante’s Peace, the effective worker’s Efficiency, the hidden soul’s Reverie: we have this knowledge of a dynamo creating hopes, models of living, unapproachable pains ignored or at safe distance; yet our theology always involves the Unapproachable: something of life is too much, too compromised, too futile, squarely to face. Those who are walking a deluded path, are not getting their comeuppance any time this century, perhaps. Yet even as we do know and abide by such call for Patience, we need an Oasis or a Respite, a song sung, a peace unproud, an undeluded Dependency on what Hope, what Person in Christ, may come.

That is, all subscribe to quality theological points, that we are simply incapable of creating for ourselves all we in fact need; no explanation or sermon or relationship can replace the unparalleled Mercy or Acceptance or plain Forgiveness dealt to us. That is, even those walking a Saved course in life, need a theology that overlooks one’s innate “goodness” (whatever that’s worth) and tells the patient Story, tells the peaceful Soliloquy, informs the eager believer’s Fantasy. And then we are in better form to do that miracle called getting out of bed, facing the day, beginning to Cope.

For we are more than conquerors; we love every one of the day’s hours, in morning-time elation; muttered frustrations be gone, and that Paradox lived into: that God is for us, only so that we might earn a bit more patience from our impatient soul, earn a bit more in situ Peace from our clamoring heart, simply know that foretastes of Heaven are like our sought-after times of day, which times also have the power—for no time in and of itself is all-sufficient—to teach us to dream big, of what God is already breaking in on and spilling over into our simple consciences.

Others are walking a deluded path, and yet that is no excuse to be frustrated or to play the blame game. What it does mean is that life shall not equate to the things we wish it to equate to. On some level the stakes are simply too high, even for us as we stand in judgment of others, to walk down: all of us can make the mistake of shunning someone or quietly speaking of what they “get up to” in their sinful pride. What this means is, that Mercy has divine Power to destroy strongholds, and we actually enter a phase of non-judgmentalism.