I wish that you could smell this scene and feel the cool ocean breeze touch your face right now. I wish this photograph could jump off the monitor screen and I could walk along the shore again-- if only for a few minutes this morning.Starting around the beginning of November I promise myself that I'm not going to overeat on Thanksgiving and every year I end up waddling away from the kitchen table. This year it was especially true because we went to my mom's house and you can't walk away from her cooking. It's that good. What's worse is that before the day is over, I've gone back to the refrigerator a handful of times for seconds and thirds and fourths.
I took the picture above, the morning after Thanksgiving. Daniel and I took the girls to a beach off the Oregon/Washington coast. Morgan and Ariel ran several miles and Daniel and I walked maybe one and a half miles. The Pacific Ocean was the perfect remedy to our turkey day food-hangover. It was in fact, somewhat magical, an experience of relationship with God.
I believe that God is a morning person. He's always doing important things and making stuff happen during morning time. All the way back into the early part of the Old Testament, He told Moses almost daily to do all of his confronting to Pharaoh in the morning. He said, "Get up in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, the God of Hebrews says, 'Let my people go so they may worship me'".
I got one of those forwarded emails the other day from a friend. It's one of those letters that you put your answers to some questions and forward on to another friend and they read your answers and email you back with theirs. One of the questions was, Have you ever cried yourself to sleep? I was going to say "No", but I told to truth to this cyberspace place. Yes, I've cried myself to sleep many many times. The night has lasted so long before that I thought it would never end.
But by morning..... things looked so different. In fact, they were so different that it was almost too embarrassing to look in the mirror. Whatever it was that triggered me to an emotional meltdown, diminished overnight--- down to almost nothing. I'm fueled back up to face the next guaranteed crisis. There's just something about the newness of the day that gives a completely new dimension to life.
Almost every writing class I take, students are advised to sleep on their material before submitting it. It's good advice, but not just for submitting written material. It's good advice for everything.
Psalm 30:5For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.The most important morning go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFjVXrRKwsU
