Day 5 – The Second Week

It’s 6:00 and I’m starting to write.  I was out of bed by 5:30 but then I wanted to change some laundry and spent some time praying and now I’ve got some time to try to stay on track.

I had an interesting moment before my alarm went off this morning.  I think I was in a dream and it was one of those moments where something in the dream draws you out of your sleep and into the waking world.  I don’t remember what the dream was, so maybe it was something else, but I became aware that my alarm was off.  Whatever had awakened me, it wasn’t my alarm and I became suddenly aware that my alarm was not going to go off.

I’d turned off my alarm on the weekend so that I could get a bit more sleep.  Unfortunately the knowledge that I’m going to sleep in on either day simply leads me to stay up later, which doesn’t really maximize the benefit of sleeping in, but anyway, my alarm was off, and I forgot to turn it on when I went to bed last night.

So I woke up, not quite in a panic, but certainly with a sinking feeling that it was going to be close to 7 as so often happens when I forget to turn on my alarm.  It’s that feeling of missing out because of a foolish oversight, but to my great pleasure (and I mean that sincerely) it was 4:36, so I turned on my alarm and went back to sleep.

It takes me back to one of those inner struggles of faith – “Was it God who woke me up so that I could make my writing goal, or was it just coincidence?  Was it just some random stirring from sleep?  Should I thank God for this?”

Well, to begin with, I can’t be certain that my waking up at 4:36 was a specific act of God.  There was no vision or voice.  I hadn’t prayed specifically for God to help me avoid sleeping in.  There was nothing that I could recognize as a calling card or as a sign that God shook me from a deep sleep.  So, in that way, I can’t be certain if it was God or if it was random chance.

There are some people of faith, certainly in evangelicalism who believe that God is the author of everything, so there is never any question of whether to thank God or not because God is behind everything that happens.

I have always had trouble with this concept because it always leaves me to a troubled mind because I’m always wondering why God would be behind all these bad things that are happening.  It’s just hard to imagine that God has some grand design for many of the horrible things that happen in this world, which has led me to believe that there are some things in this world that are left to run their course, and in the same way there are things in this world that people are left to initiate.  In short God lets us choose badly, and he also lets us suffer the consequences of those choices – even small bad choices like forgetting to turn on alarms.

But this can also be troubling because if this is true, then God also lets people suffer for the bad choices of other people.  My view of things requires that God does not protect us from each other a lot of the time.  This runs counter to a lot of what is written in the Psalms, and this too can be troubling to me, but it’s where I’m at for the moment.

Being awakened early seems like a small act of God to be worried about (and I’m not worried about it) but this is the cosmic thinking that lies behind any small blessing that ever happens to me.

Where I currently sit on this is that I feel certain, that regardless if I can see God’s signature on any particular event, God’s signature is all over the entire system, and in that sense God is behind everything that happens, even if we are allowed some freedom to act within that system.

God is most certainly behind me waking up on time even though my alarm wasn’t set because God is behind the way my brain works.  God is behind the processes that put me to sleep and that wake me up.  God is behind the way my memory works and the way my brain pulls things out from all the stacks and stacks of information and brings them to my attention at appropriate times.

So, all that to say, I’m so thankful that God woke me up this morning so that I could set my alarm. in order to wake up half an hour later.

In a way, my efforts to rush through my post last night and to not spend any time going through twitter or watching Youtube was like a prayer – there was an element of acting in order to be better rested come 5:00AM.  There were other factors as well, but I certainly had a resolve to write in the morning that I must admit is not always there, and I would guess that this played some part in my waking up when I did.

It would be so easy to dismiss such a moment as a lucky event, but that view always moves me further from God and closer to a world where everything is random.  To be thankful to God brings me back to the belief that even if God is not pulling all the strings of every single thing, God is certainly conducting an orchestra or directing a play.  God is instrumental in creating something that we are all a part of and for whatever reason he doesn’t want it to be a solo.

Being thankful reminds me that despite all the cacophony of the bad choices so many of us make, God is working and coaxing us to join him as he creates something beautiful out of the mess.

I don’t know how big a part this blog post will have in the cosmic order of things (not very), but I am certain that God woke me up this morning so that I could I do my best to add something to the music rather than the noise.  I hope I’ve done that.  I’ve certainly tried, and I’m thankful to God for the opportunity.