The day after Memorial Day Monday, of course, is Tuesday. But when Monday is a holiday and Tuesday begins the week, then Tuesday acts like Monday. Except that I work from home most Mondays, and Tuesday doesn’t allow me that freedom. People grump about Mondays but they’re one of my favorite days of the week; today I understood the grumps.
I jumped from a full weekend of travel and friends to a day in the office, the more worse for wear because I did not sleep well last night. At all. I woke up from a bad dream at 3:20am, got up for a drink of water and a walk around the house, hoping to fall back into restful sleep. No such luck. Same bad dream, different scene (If I could only recall in daylight the craziness of my dreams I could write a movie blockbuster. Where does this stuff come from?). Repeat for the next four hours until daylight wins and I give up.
Don’t get me wrong: I love my job. But I also love sleep, and its lack put me on edge. I forgot to eat breakfast. I left my full travel coffee mug on the kitchen counter.
Surprisingly, I got to our weekly Tuesday morning meeting a) prepared and b) through the agenda in less time than usual (maybe I was too tired to be chatty). I moved on to one overly complicated project, only to realize I had another more pressing project and not quite enough time.
Between projects Guy had given me a handmade cross, a gift from another pastor made by one of her parishioners. Guy had another very similar and so, as he told me its story and I commented on how good it felt in my hand, he encouraged me to take it.
I couldn’t know that cross would be such a gift today.
I set it to the left of my desk as I worked. Repeatedly it caught my eye and I picked it up, admiring its heft, the way it fit my hand, the smooth beauty of the wood grain. I’d put it down again and return to work. Until the song on my busy-office-noise-canceling headphones caught my attention:
We have seen the pain
that shaped our hearts
And in our shame
We’re still breathing, ’cause
We have seen the hope
of your healing
Rising from our souls
is the feeling
We are drawing close
Your light is shining through
Your light is shining through
Wake up, wake up, wake up
wake up all you sleepers
Stand up, stand up
Stand up all you dreamers
Hands up, hands up
Hands up all believers
Take up your cross, carry it on
all that you reveal
with light in us
will come to life
and start breathing, ’cause
here we stand our hearts are yours, Lord
not our will but yours be done, Lord
“Wake Up” by All Sons & Daughters
On a sleepy, sleepy day, the call to Wake up, Stand up, Hands up, Take up your cross, carry it on broke through my haze. I looked up the song lyrics, held the cross, and prayed. The last line, sung over and over, Jesus’ own prayer in Gethsemane as He faced the cross. Not my will but yours, Lord! I pick up my cross. I couldn’t sleep but you didn’t sleep, either, as you faced your death. I feel whiny but you sweat blood. Egads, there can be absolutely no comparison.
And yet there I sat, at my desk, working “in Jesus’ name,” without Him. My work: reading the Word of God, writing questions to guide people in their study, and the passage about sharing the good news of Jesus Christ… Prayer and the power of the Spirit are integral to this work, and I had neglected Him, had attempted to do it in my own sapped strength.
Would it surprise you that, once God caught my attention, the work flowed out of my heart and mind and fingers onto the computer? Nah, me neither. His light shines through.
In her new book, Wearing God, Lauren Winner writes:
“One of the invitations…of the Bible is this: you can discover things about God by looking around your ordinary, everyday life. An ordinary Tuesday – what you wear, what you eat, and how you experience the weather – has something to offer you about God. There is a method here, and it is Jesus’ method. Jesus, after all, specialized in asking people to steep themselves in the words of the scriptures and then to look around their ordinary Tuesdays to see what they could see about holiness and life with God. This is not merely entertaining wordplay to give overactive minds something pious to do. It is the Bible’s way of making us aware of God and of the world in which we meet God.” (15-16).
On this ordinary Tuesday, a day that pretended to be a Monday of the grumpy variety, I learned (yet again) that God shows up. That a gift might be an icon, that a song might lead to prayer, that my work will only be as effective as my remembrance of God’s presence. That God loves me, and that He has the power to overcome my sleepless grumps with His gentle good humor.
What has your ordinary Tuesday taught you about God?
