March 10 – Rest

I woke up early this morning. Early, especially for this particular morning when we lose an hour of rest for Daylight Saving Time. 

It was still dark as night outside. I started the coffee brewing, turned on a lamp, and sat on the couch with my journal. The world around me is dark and quiet, as I begin to write.

The word for the day is rest.

My Aunt Violet had a unique talent for rest. She could fall asleep in a straight-backed wooden chair without the slightest discernable change in her posture. My mother could also do that, although not as well as Aunt Violet. Her head would fall back and she might let loose a snore – a dead giveaway.

I have always sort of envied people who could find rest that easily. 

My father would sit in his easy chair in the living room with the TV tuned to the baseball game. Eyes closed, perfectly still. I turned the TV off and his eyes flew open. 

“Hey, I was watching that!” 

“Your eyes were closed.” 

“I was listening.”

Things old guys do, right?

The other night I was watching the late news in bed. I closed my eyes … still listening ... sort of. Kim turned it off and my eyes flew open.

“Hey, I was listening to that!”

“You were snoring.”

Oh. Well, then.

Habits of rest change with age, apparently. Not only have I joined the watching the TV with my eyes closed club but also the waking up before the sunrise club. 

But I have realized that the beauty of seeing the world before the sunrise is being a witness to the moments when the world awakes from its rest. You carry a little bit of that stillness with you into the day.

Now, suddenly, while I’m writing, I hear the birds outside the window chirping – they are the first sign that day is coming. The sky is just beginning to lighten. In a few minutes the dawn will break – a new day is arriving and the birds sing their joy.

They have been quiet all night long, but now they can break the silence with their singing. 

It quiets after a few moments. There is a pause – a rest – before someone new chimes in. And then another voice is heard from.

And the dawn breaks – not in any majestic way in my neighborhood. It just very gradually gets lighter in the world. it is the birds more than anything that tell us it is a new day. A day that is, in most ways, like any other day – a day that God has made for blessing and thanksgiving, for work and laughter, for rest.

I rouse myself from my reverie and look out the window again. In these few minutes that have passed, the sky has quietly changed from a dark to a light shade of gray. It will be rain today. But even as cloudy as it is, the sun is making headway across the firmament. Details emerge – leaves shining with beads of water, faint sights of green in the grass beginning to grow. 

Soon the day will be full of activity and sound. But this moment at the beginning, there is still rest.

May we carry this into the day. 

photo: Sunrise in Kanab, Utah. Not my neighborhood, sadly.