Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
    for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
    for to you I entrust my life.
Psalm 143:8 (NIV)

I have always been a morning person, dang it. It’s not like I was given a choice in the matter. It was a curse growing up. My parents were sore with me. I didn’t understand why at the time. Why wouldn’t they want to see my bright, shiny face first-thing every day before dawn? (I get it now.) Sleepovers were awful. My friends could all sleep until late morning, but I was awake and staring at a strange bedroom ceiling in the dark before dawn dreading the hours until my friend woke up. If there was something exciting happening tomorrow, it meant that I would wake up even earlier than usual, and would have to wait even longer for the anticipated event to begin.

Of course, there is an up-side to being a morning person, too, which far exceeds the adversities of childhood sleepovers. Near the top of the list is the simple fact that I’ve witnessed more sunrises than most people. As added bonus, I typically have had the opportunity to enjoy a private showing in the quiet as God paints a unique landscape on the canvas of earth and sky. I also have time to ponder mysteries, mull over probing questions, and have conversations with God. When I was young I found the aloneness of early morning a curse. Now, I relish it like a secret hiding place. I sometimes grieve when it is over. I wonder if this is healthy or not. Another probing question for me to mull over.

The further I’ve gotten in my life journey, the morning has taken on deeper metaphorical meaning. Writers, poets, and songwriters have always made use of the morning. Hope rises with the dawn each day. They are intertwined in creation, an artistic hint at the mystery of the Trinity. One while being two.

Morning is a daily new beginning. The morning brings a clean slate on which I might be born again, take a new path, let go of my hatred, forgive my enemy again, make a different choice, experience new things, or take a moment to fully en-joy familiar mundane things like the moment when the sound of Wendy downstairs breaks the silence of my quiet-time as I hear her get out our vitamins for the day and makes our smoothies. Perhaps to some it would be a banal, everyday moment to be ignored. For me, it is an opportunity for joy as I realize anew just how much I would miss this moment if she were to reach the end of her days before me.

Today’s chapter, Psalm 143, is the final song of lament (in other words, the blues), written by King David and compiled as part of the anthology of ancient Hebrew song lyrics we call the Psalms. As I have read the lyrics of King David anew on this chapter-a-day journey, I have come to the conclusion that he was an Enneagram Type Four. According to the Enneagram Institute, Fours are described as sensitive, introspective, expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental. That pretty much describes the lyrics of Psalm 143 as David dramatically cries out to God from the darkness of his own circumstances and longs for…

the morning.

Of course he does. Hope and the dawn. Two in one. One in two. A daily eucatastrophe breaks on the horizon and rides the rays of the sun to deliver a clean slate, a new beginning, another shot, and the infinite possibilities whispered by the Author of this dawn: “Everything is possible for one who believes.”

And so, the sounds of Wendy downstairs breaks the silence of my quiet-time on this new day. For me, it is the 20,071st dawn of my earthly journey. The sound of vitamins rattling out of their bottles tells me it’s time to end this post and enter the hope.

Have a great day, my friend.