Between Darkness And Light

I was up at 5AM on Monday.   Prince stuck his big, wet, collie nose in my hand.   That’s sign language for “I gotta go out.”  

So, after I took Prince out (and Fancee too, she wasn’t about to be left behind) I started back upstairs to bed, but it was that awkward hour, too early to be up and too late to go back to bed.  I realized, by the time I got back to sleep, it would be time to get up.  

So, I went back and made coffee.    

There is something meditative about being up early.   The house is quiet.  Nothing is moving yet.  The whole world is breathing softly.  

Sitting at the kitchen table, I was reminded how I used to feel watching my boys sleep after they would try my patience, which happened more frequently the older they got. 

I’d push the door open, stick my head in their room, the rectangle of hall light racing across the floor, up the side of the bed, catching their faces awash in sleep and innocence.  I’d stand there, frozen in place.  

So much is forgiven in those quiet moments between darkness and light.   All the unimportant things vanish.  You see clearly what has always been there to see.  Hidden in plain sight.  You gently close the door afraid you will scare it away.   And no matter, how careful you are, how silently the latch catches, you always do.    

Maybe being up at 5AM is one of those fixed windows of grace God builds into a day.   When the presence of God is revealed to be close at hand.  

But I suspect it is probably has more to do with the novelty of being awake at 5AM and being off balance, heading out the door in your bare feet and slippers, one arm in your coat holding two leashes, the other feeling for the sleeve behind you.  Thinking how you’d rather be back in your warm bed.     

In these moments, God comes.   Like a thief in the night, Jesus says.  Or maybe, like a dog’s wet nose in the night.  Or a confused parent pushing open a bedroom door in the night.  

You find yourself in a place you never expected to be.  Shivering in the driveway at 5AM, the eastern sky brightening imperceptibly once again with eternal promise and good will.  One by one the trees, the fence, the garage, step through the thinning curtain of night.   

In such things as these, God shines.   

The presence of God is hidden deeply in this world around us.   That’s what Luther said.  God is hidden in a bed of straw, surrounded by barnyard smells and a strange cast of misfits and angels.  

You catch a glimpse of it, blink in disbelief, and it all vanishes in plain sight.  Children become adults.   The world stirs back to life.    The low growl of traffic on Main Street begins to rumble.  

The shepherds went back to their flock and the angels returned to their heaven.  We are left to do the holy work of Mary, pondering these things in our hearts, while the baby cries to be changed.