Morning Glory: The One Who Brings Forth the Sun

I slept in this morning until 5 a.m. and dragged myself out of bed by 5:30, because the mattress was sooo soft and cradled all my bones exactly the way it should have... I know y'all can relate. Sometimes, there are mornings when it doesn't matter how good the coffee smells or how long the to-do list is -- when you hit that exact-right bone-cradling moment, you spend an extra thirty minutes in it.

Because of the sleeping-in, I caught the sunrise in a still-darkened house, and I took a few moments to stand at my window and watch the rosy glow strengthen behind the mountain range that I can see from my front deck. The navy blue of night fled away as the point beyond the horizon turned orange and then gold, until the tip of the fiery ball hovered just above the furry tree line across the peak. Glory!

This verse came to mind: "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease."

That was Genesis 8:22, and with that verse, God spoke His covenant that He would never again destroy all life, all His creation that He had formed in the beginning. He put a rainbow in the sky as a promise to Noah and his wife and their three sons and their wives that He would never flood the earth again. "I have set My rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember My covenant between Me and you and all living creatures of every kind... Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth" (Genesis 9:13-14, 16). 

The sign of the rainbow is God's everlasting promise of faithfulness to us, from Him. Don't let the enemy twist this incredible meaning in any other direction, because this promise is almost too much for our finite minds to grapple with, so flawless is it.

Great is His faithfulness! "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning! Great is Your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23). 

So... I'm going nowhere where I thought I was going to go this morning (I was planning on Joshua 23 today, but the Holy Spirit led me here instead): After the night and before the morning, there's a holy pause, as though the world is still for a moment, as though creation waits -- with bated breath -- for the new mercies, for the new faithfulness.

One of my favorite fictional characters -- Anne of Green Gables -- says, in a moment of beautiful reasoning: "Tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it yet." At the beginning of each day, the canvas is still blank and the paints are still undisturbed. Pause before the brush dips. Wait for the Master Artist to draw the first stroke.

This morning, the birdsong begins. Through my windows, in the pre-dawn gray, I can hear the early avian chorus wake up with anticipation. Beautiful calls, rippling, trilling melodies accompany the morning silence. More glorious instruments join the rollcall until the cool morning air is alive with praise. All attention on the One Who brings forth the sun.

The writer of Lamentations continues on from the faithfulness of God with this reflection: "I say to myself: 'The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for Him.' The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while He is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him. Let him bury his face in the dust -- there may yet be hope. Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace. For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though He brings grief, He will show compassion, so great is His unfailing love. For He does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men" (Lamentations 3:24-33).

When Covid shutdowns rolled in last year... and then continued on far longer than anyone had anticipated, I remember taking a walk through the cold autumn afternoon. The sky was blue as sapphires, and the leaves practically blazed on the trees in their brilliant fall raiment, and I stopped in the middle of the road and stared at one of those trees. 

"Seedtime and harvest will never cease as long as the earth endures." The flawless, stunning beauty of God's creation still threaded through the shock and horror, the despair, the questions, the sadness, and the deep, deep grief surrounding me.

How great is His faithfulness! With infinite tenderness, He leads us through the dark places with the beauty of the birdsong, with the peacefulness of still mornings, with the refreshing vigor of an autumn walk, with the faithful promise of a mountain sunrise.

We wait for Him. He meets us when we wait. 

As I prayed for my children this morning, as I asked for the Lord to fill up their hearts with passion and pursuit and praise for Him -- I thought about the ways I've seen the Lord work in them already. It's an early work, right? The sun has just begun to rise in them, the Son has only recently knocked on the doors of their hearts. As I'm sitting on my couch, typing out this post, I'm nearly blinded by the morning sun streaming through my windows -- it's far stronger now than it was when I first saw it this morning. The Lord is still rising in the hearts of my children, He is growing stronger and more brilliant. He is doing His good work with increasing strength in them. He doesn't give them the total package all at once; He brings it gradually. He builds from the foundation... up.

What He brings when we wait is amazing. Don't walk off into your day before you notice the glory of morning. It's breath-taking!

"I am still confident of this; I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord" (Psalm 27:14).

As surely as sun rose this morning and will rise again tomorrow because the Lord commanded it to in the beginning... He is faithful to see us through the hard times, the breathless pause between the night... and the sunrise.