For no discernable reason whatsoever, the last few days have started in a peculiar way. I’ve been awakened with an alert sense of God’s presence.

Maybe its the skylight directly over my bed; I wake up everyday looking into the sky.
Maybe it was something I ate.

Now, I don’t mean to say that I am usually without that knowledge of His presence. On the contrary: I know well that God will never ever leave me and I am always as close to Him as I want to be. But as a pastor, you might suspect that it is a daily occurrence that I awaken with praise on my lips, a song in my heart, and a prayer effortlessly cascading from my spirit heavenward.

Usually, I just want coffee.

But in the last couple of days, my first thought when I wake up is “Lord, I love you. And I want to be exactly where and what you want me to be today.” It’s as if God is bedside, nudging me while I sleep, trying to wake me up so that He and I can get the day going. And when my eyes do finally open, I have a keen awareness that He’s raring to go.

My guess is that some who read this might blow it off as a little too…..something. I don’t know–freaky-deaky, Kum-Ba-Yah, a little too “out there”. I mean consider it: God rousing you awake and allowing you the tranquility of having your first thought be on Him and all He is. Weird, right? I thought so.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “The prayer of the morning determines the day.” And Bonhoeffer was one who would know exactly what living a life dedicated to God was all about. You might dismiss his socio-political involvement as radical, but he lived a life with his eyes on God and eternity. This knowledge of the Divine presence of God in his life caused him to live everyday as if it were his last. And when his last day did come when he was hanged at age 39, he is reported to have said on his way to the gallows “This is the end–but for me, the beginning of life.”

A mind fixed on God is a mind that is all-at-once at peaceful rest and restless passion. It is an unlikely combination of being content in the suffiiciency of God and yet being discontent with my own shortcomings in dedication to Him. It is a keen awareness that with God, all is in Hand, and yet I am His hand. It’s strange, and yet the most glorious place to be and to live.

This is one of those blogs that don’t have a conclusion.

But just for fun, here’s a guy playing Kum Ba Yah on a tuba. Enjoy.