The First Thought of the Day

There is a moment, about a second and a half long, between being asleep and knowing what day it is, and Ari has learned that in that second and a half there is nothing wrong with anything.

Then it arrives.

It does not arrive as a memory. That is the thing he has never been able to explain to anybody. A memory would be manageable. It arrives as a conclusion, already reached, in his own voice, with no working shown: that is it, then. Not a thought about the night. A thought about God, and about whether there is anything left there for a man like him, and it is delivered with the weariness of somebody who has been patient a long time and has finally stopped.

He lies there. The room is gray. There is a shirt over the chair.

And what he cannot do, the thing that is actually happening this morning, is speak. Not to anybody, and particularly not upward. Every form of words he has ever used feels like it belongs to a different man, one who had a right to use them, and reaching for one this morning feels like putting on somebody else's coat.

So he does not. He lies there with his mouth shut, and the conclusion sits on his chest, and the light gets slightly less gray.

Let me stop the story now and speak straight to you, if this is your morning.

I am not going to ask how long it had been. There is no count here and there never will be. I am not going to talk about starting again. And I am not going to agree with the conclusion that met you when you woke, because it is not true, and it did not come from God, and I will not add one word to it.

You are being come toward this morning, and you were being come toward while you slept. Hosea says His going forth is prepared as the morning, and a thing prepared is a thing already arranged, not a thing waiting on what happened last night; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a fact in a gray room where a man cannot open his mouth.

His going forth is prepared as the morning

Let me name what is happening, because getting this named is most of the work this morning.

You woke up under a conclusion, not a memory. And because it was in your own voice, it did not feel like an accusation, it felt like realism. That is the whole trick of it. An accusation you would argue with. A conclusion in your own voice you simply accept, the way you accept the weather.

So let me put a different sentence next to it, and let me tell you where it comes from.

Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.Hosea 6:3

Hosea is not writing to people who have been doing well. That whole book is addressed to a nation that has been unfaithful in the most graphic terms the prophets ever used, and this line lands in the middle of it.

His going forth is prepared as the morning. Prepared. Set up in advance, arranged, already in motion. And the comparison is the sunrise, which is the single most reliable event in human experience and the one thing no person has ever affected in either direction. Nobody has ever delayed a sunrise by having a bad night. Nobody has ever earned one by having a good one.

You are being come toward on a schedule that your night did not touch, and you were never able to alter it in either direction. That is what stands written in Hosea 6, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts that beside a conclusion delivered in a man's own voice in a gray room.

And then the rain. He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain. Two rains. In that country the former rain came in autumn to soften ground that had gone iron hard through the summer so it could be plowed, and the latter came in spring to swell the grain before harvest. One softens, one finishes. He is described as both, which means He comes to the hard ground and He comes to the almost done, and neither one is a special case.

You are ground the former rain comes to, and you were never disqualified for being hard this morning. Scripture names Him as the rain that softens iron ground, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that specific to a man who cannot speak.

And notice the first clause, because it is gentle and most people miss it: then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord. Follow on. Keep going. That is the whole requirement, and it is a walking word, not a performing word. It does not ask for a good morning, an explanation, or the right feeling. It asks a man to keep facing the same direction.

You are able to do the only thing being asked, and you were never required to arrive at it eloquent. The written word says follow on, and the Holy Spirit is the one who counts a man sitting up on the edge of a bed as following on.

Now the plain and necessary thing, and it belongs right here in the middle. If your body is in a bad way this morning, see a doctor today and tell them the truth about the drinking. Never make decisions about your body or about stopping on your own. That is not a failure of faith, it is care of a life God values. And beyond that: the friend, the counselor, the helpline, the room where people sit in a circle and say true things out loud, all of it is God's kindness with a face on it. If you cannot pray this morning, ring somebody. That is not second best. That is often exactly how He comes.