A LESSON LEARNED AT SUMMER CAMP
The Summer after my freshman year of college, I served as a volunteer staffer at a camp on Lake Champion in New York. My responsibilities included, amongst other things, waking up at 5:00 a.m. to drive a boat across the lake and prepare (from scratch, mind you) a campfire breakfast for a dozen teenagers who would paddle across the lake in canoes for a sunrise breakfast. The first week was brutal! As a nineteen year old, I was not accustomed to getting up this early! However, by week two, I was hitting my stride; and weeks three and four were easy. What changed? Well, the consistency of waking up at the same time helped, but what really changed was my nightly routine. During week one, I often stayed up until 11:00 p.m. or midnight chatting with fellow summer staffers. They didn’t have to get up nearly as early as me and so could afford to stay up late. However, by week two, I knew something had to change if I was going to survive! So, as much as it pained the extrovert in me, I began to go to bed earlier in order to prioritize my morning responsibilities. I learned a difficult, but very basic lesson: a good morning begins the night before.
THE KIND OF PERSON WE WANT TO BE
If you are anything like me, you have aspirations to be a healthy person. You envision the kind of person you’d like to be (perhaps even the kind of person you’re called to be) and you imagine yourself as disciplined, self-controlled, growing, learning, and maturing.
Perhaps one aspect of this vision of this “future you” involves rising early to read scripture and pray? The morning devotion is an old standby of the people of God—dating back to the Hebew people of the Old Testament and the early church in the New. For millennia, followers of the one, true God have risen early, shaking off slumber, to keep watch in prayer and meditation on God’s word.
The Bible is replete with stories and exhortations on rising early. Here are just a few examples:
The Psalmist: “Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust.” — Psalm 143:8
Christ himself: “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” — Mark 1:35
The Disciples: “And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.” — Mark 16:2
THE CHALLENGE
What makes keeping this practice especially difficult in our time is that we have options and temptations that our forebears never had to face. We have electricity, the setting of the sun does not end the day for us! We have the option of staying awake late into the night, stretching the day far past the point of exhaustion for many of us. Additionally, with the advent of the television, and then recorded videos, and then streaming internet, we have access to nearly limitless entertainment that keeps our brains so stimulated we cannot hear our bodies saying, “I’m tired, it’s time to go to sleep.” And so, for the average 21st century Western Christian, the habit of rising early to pray and read scripture remains desirable, but frustratingly unattainable.
NEW EVENING HABITS LEAD TO NEW MORNING HABITS
Unattainable, that is, unless we learn the lesson I was forced to learn at that Summer Camp (and have since had to relearn many times): a good morning begins the night before. So the habit of rising early to pray does not begin with my alarm clock annoyingly beeping at 6:00am. The habit actually begins sometime around 9:30pm the night before, when I need to be doing things like:
Cleaning the coffee pot and grinding fresh coffee (if I grind it in the morning, it will wake up the kids).
Selecting breakfast food.
Turning off screens.
Laying out clothes for tomorrow.
Setting out the Book of Common Prayer and Bible on the kitchen table.
The night before, I want to do everything I can to make it possible for me to roll out of bed, tip-toe down the stairs like a ninja (carefully avoiding the floorboard squeak), and spend a few precious minutes alone and quiet with the Lord before the hustle and grind of a new day begins. Of course, when that alarm goes off, I still face the daily challenge of waking up or hitting snooze; but a good evening routine nudges me towards discipline and away from sloth.
Friends, this stuff isn’t revolutionary, there’s “nothing new under the sun,” but you and I face a unique set of challenges in our time that make the normative spiritual habits of Christians especially difficult. I love the mental picture of Redeemer folk rising in the early hours of the morning all over the city to keep watch in prayer at our kitchen tables, in our armchairs, and on living room sofas. However, as romantic and lovely as that picture is, a more important image might be that of Redeemer people turning off TVs, closing laptops, setting coffee makers, and laying out Bibles and Prayer Books earlier in the evening, the night before.
In the Father’s love,
Dan
