ARISE

Getting out of bed in the morning is not always a joyous occasion for me. In part it depends upon what I know the day offers.

Plus with the oddity of my routine at times, arising for me is a little different than most people. The best example of that is on Mondays. I work full time on the weekends so that means that on Monday morning I go to bed after being up all night at work. It is generally around six am.

Then around ten thirty in the morning I “arise.” Do I feel complete rested? Not really, but after the long hours of the weekend at work and being up all night on Sunday at work I just have trouble sleeping a long time on Monday.

When I do get up my mind lingers in images of knowing my next few hours will include a trip to the gym for my exercise routine. Oh I’m awake, but I don’t classify that as a time I love to think of as quality time. It is more like survival time. Still it is how I function and have for several years.

Now that I have bogged this posting down with a snippet of my personal life I’m sure that I can say there are probably a lot of people out there for whom getting up in the morning is not the highlight of their day. It might be wonderful if we could all arise with a smile on our face and then skip out into the world, praising God, celebrating life and adding a little joy to other’s lives. I haven’t met too many people who function on that level to be honest.

There are difference types of arising though. What I just wrote about is the physical reality of being human. And as we get older arising includes those little “groans” as our bodies remind that aging is not a time when we have any delusions of being immortal or even pain free.

While we each cope with that kind of arising in our own way, we also know that our soul needs it moments of arising also. For just like the mental realm where our minds have to at times be challenged to think before the cerebral juices will flow, so our souls need moments when wings carry us to a glimpse of heaven’s reality.

Only I’m not sure we always worry about finding an alarm clock for our souls. That is different for different people. And it doesn’t always come from going to church.

For the real spiritual alarm clock is the one that comes from the Lord. His spirit will touch us and we shall arise. Only it is on his timetable and calendar not ours.

God knows our live better than we do. To me that means he understands our need for rest and also when we need to be woken up. Some would try to orchestrate those spiritual arising moments with making it a point to expect it to happen every time they go to some religious activity.

However the Holy Spirit is in reality more like wind in that we can’t control or dictate when his spirit stirs in us and we arise in our souls. Nor does any formula of worship truly bring fruit to that quality. The big question is when God’s alarm clock does go off and his spirit is nudging are we truly listening? That is one question only person can answer for him or herself.