He gently tapped my shoulder while it was still dark outside, still dark in our room, while I was covered in the dark of my dreams.
“Do you still want to wake up this early?”
Yes. I really do.
I made a cup of coffee, opened my computer, and let words trickle from my fingertips onto the keyboard.
And I felt it there, the seed that was planted decades ago when I began to love God most, to hope for the courage to follow Him wherever He led me. I felt the seed vibrate with the song of my soul, singing along to the longing to die to my own dreams and live the one He wrote for me before my lungs ever filled with air.
God is.
What does that mean about us? We are the dream and the plan and the song of His Being in this dark world. Our God placed His treasure not in the glorious mountains or the endless ocean tides. He did not breathe the essence of His person into a golden temple.
He set the fire of His glory in our breasts, and lights the world with a forever Love that redeems even the most broken bits of humanity.
One small seed of sown in faith will change everything for someone, somewhere, somehow. Because those who are poor in spirit, who have poured out all they are, who live emptied of their need for worldly glory, they will inherit the Kingdom of God.
And so we crawl into His presence. We climb this great mountain of God. We write. We pray. We preach. We give of ourselves, of our money, of our time, of our inconvenience. We have mercy on those who least deserve it. We forgive those who harm us. We offer more to those who appreciate it least. We live poured out, broken into bits under the weight of our smallness. We are those who deserve God least, and yet He has chosen us to be His Very Own.
Here in my living room, with its half-painted walls, in front of the coffee table I found on the side of the road and the lamp everyone loves best of all, I pray the only prayer that can help me up this hill all of humanity must conquer in order to find the way Home.
“Lord, show me the Way.”
The seed within me expands and grows and everything makes sense because I know nothing at all for certain, but God is and does and has forever.
His answer to me is simply this: It’s never too early to wake up.
