Rolling Out Of Bed
Van Gogh, Bedroom In Arles, 1889
Do you ever find yourself grumbling as you roll out of bed? As I splash my face with cold water I’m already complaining why it takes so long to get warm water to this faucet? I start worrying as well why technology shut down our email last evening. Things are just coming apart at the seams, I mumble. I start stressing this early over those two classes I’m teaching—good grief, why can’t I get my act together, like my good friend Tim Smith, who teaches four or five classes at the same time and produces those marvelous podcasts three times a week. What’s wrong with me?
Is this really the way I want to start my days? This grumbling? Is this who I want to be?
I’m trying out a little experiment. What if I start singing first thing in the morning?
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
all I have needed Thy hand hath provided:
great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!’
What if those words became my first words? That might change my outlook for the whole day. Maybe for life.
I’ve been rereading Henri Nouwen’s marvelous book Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living In A Secular World, maybe for the third or fourth time. Actually Sharon and I are now reading it together, out loud, before sleeping. Nouwen argues so convincingly that a core message of the gospel is that each one of us is blessed. We are loved. We are chosen. God has called us a beloved child.
Those are words of new mercies, morning by morning, aren’t they?
The problem is that we wake up not feeling blessed but more like we are cursed. We wake up, says Nouwen, with so “much blaming and complaining” about everything. We “easily hear an inner voice calling us evil, bad, rotten, worthless, useless, doomed to sickness and death.”
Did you know that this great hymn, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” came to its author as he was reading the Book of Lamentations? Here we find the prophet Jeremiah’s script for feeling cursed instead of blessed.
6 He has broken my teeth on gravel;
racked with pain, I am fed on ashes.
17 Peace has gone from my life
and I have forgotten what prosperity is.
18 Then I cry out that my strength has gone
and so has my hope in the LORD.
Could this possibly be me, as I roll out of bed, grumbling, losing my strength, forgetting “my hope in the Lord”?
Fortunately, the prophet pivots quite dramatically:
21 I shall wait patiently
because I take this to heart:22 The LORD’s love is surely not exhausted,
nor has his compassion failed;
23 they are new every morning,
so great is his constancy.
24 ‘The LORD’, I say, ‘is all that I have;
therefore I shall wait for him patiently.’ Lamentations 3:16-24
What a turnaround. I am especially intrigued by the phrase “I take this to heart.” I’ve been thinking a lot about how can we take to heart this promise of inexhaustible love? How can we change the habits of our hearts to listen patiently for new mercies, every morning?
Nouwen suggests that we make this move through the “the real work of prayer.” That’s when we “become silent and listen to the voice” that tells us God’s love will never fail. Yes, we are blessed. If only we can stop the chattering in our prayer, telling God how harried we are, telling him how terrible things are in the world, telling him what he needs to do to make things better. Just turn silently and listen patiently for that quiet voice. Wait for it. It will come.
The movement of God’s Spirit is very gentle, very soft—and hidden. It does not seek attention. But that movement is also very persistent, strong and deep. It changes our hearts radically. The faithful discipline of prayer reveals to you that you are the blessed one and gives you the power to bless others.
This is what I’m looking for, a new way to roll out of bed, just listening, in silence, maybe singing a little bit. Maybe my heart too can be changed, radically. Maybe then I will be reminded I am blessed instead of cursed. That will make all the difference, morning by morning.