Awaken the Dawn

What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.The wind blows to the south and turns to the north;round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. (Ecclesiastes 1:3-6)

So, it's another morning. At least it is when I'm writing this. And my daughter is back in school, so it's back to early mornings. (I tend to sleep a bit later in the summer.) But that's okay, because I tend to be what some people refer to as a "morning person." Or, as my wife likes to say, "one of those morning people." The pastor I had in my home church used to say people could approach life in two ways. One person would say (in an Eeyore voice), "Good Lord, it's morning." The other would say, in an upbeat and excited voice (let's say like Tigger), "Good Lord, it's morning!" One approaches the morning with a air of sadness and even discouragement—as if this day will be no different than the last. The other approaches the day as a clean slate, a new beginning, a day in which God just might do something new.

The Teacher in Ecclesiastes (at least in the beginning of the book, where we are), seems to approach the day like Eeyore. He doesn't seem to be a morning person. Or, at the very least, he doesn't seem to see much point in getting up in the morning. Work is pointless, he says. The sun rises, the sun sets, and nothing changes. There is, as he will say later, nothing new under the sun.

This is one of those (many) places where it's dangerous to "cherry-pick" verses, because the Teacher's attitude here does not align with the whole of Scripture. In fact, many other Scriptures offset the Teacher's attitude here. Take, for instance, Psalm 118:24: "This day belongs to the Lord! Let’s celebrate and be glad today." Not tomorrow, not yesterday—but TODAY is God's. Other translations name "today" as the day God has acted. Today is when God is going to do something. Yes, God has acted in the past and yes, God will act in the future, but the psalmist wants us to celebrate the fact that God is working TODAY.

Am I saying it's bad to not be a morning person? Not at all. We are who God has made us to be. What we can't let happen is to assume God is not at work, to allow our emotions to overwhelm our praise. Because God is at work...today. And every day.

There are more Scriptures that I could quote, but sometimes a picture can say what words can't. This morning, a friend of mine posted this picture on Facebook of her family greeting the dawn, and it is an absolutely breathtaking photo that demonstrates the true emptiness in the Teacher's attitude at the beginning of this book. And it reminds me, at least, of why Jesus said we should approach the Kingdom of God like children (Mark 10:15).

If I were to give a title to this photo, though, it would be from Psalm 108:2 - "I will awaken the dawn."

Unlike the Teacher (and many in our world today) let's rejoice, because God is at work in our lives today.