Sally from the ICE team here!
Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a night owl. I can stay up all night without too much trouble but I find mornings very difficult.
I wonder about you? Do you find mornings or evenings easier?
But, despite my bat-like tendencies, every once in a while I find myself waking up at dawn and unable to go back to sleep again. In fact, this happened just last week. I woke up at 6am and found that I wasn’t tired so I decided to get up and sit in the garden with my coffee.
Have you ever woken up in the very early hours of the morning? The world seems like a different place! The roads are quiet, the birds are singing their hearts out and the sun is just starting to peek in the sky. It is at moments like these when everything feels new and fresh and exciting. A day full of possibilities is ahead.
In that time, while I sat watching birds flitting about in the sunrise sky, I was reminded again of a verse in the Bible that is very special to me:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23
This verse is written in the middle of a tough part of the Bible. Lamentations is a whole book that tells of the difficult time the people of Israel went through, a time when their city was destroyed and they were taken away from their homes to a far away land. But in the middle of it all, the writer of this book looks upwards and remembers that God’s love never ends, that every day is a new gift from Him and He never gives up, even when we do. Even when the people had done wrong things for a long time, God didn’t give up on them – He still had a plan to save them.
Our world is in a difficult time at the moment too, there are people who are struggling across the planet and our lives look very different to how they did just a few months ago. We might feel a little bit like the people in this book did, confused, scared, perhaps angry at how events have unfolded or sorrowful for people who are hurting. It’s ok to feel that way, we feel these things because things are hard at the moment – we’re going through a tough time together.
But even though we might be finding things hard, the Bible tells us that we always have hope – a hope that is ‘steadfast and certain’ (it’s in the Bible! Hebrews 6:19). As the writer of Lamentations looked up and remembered God’s gift of mercy every new morning, so we can look up and remember that His mercy and goodness is new every morning for us too. Each day is another chance to trust Him and ask Him to help us through.
So, next time you find yourself waking up early like I did, why not look at the dawn sky and remember that verse. We are not forgotten, and this time will not last forever. Christians believe that God loved and remembered us so much that He sent Jesus to die for us! He is our hope in times of trouble – and He will never let us down.