The beginning of each day is a tender, important time. As we wake, we typically need to orient ourselves. What time is it? Is the sun up already? What lies ahead in the day? What have I just remembered from yesterday? With such questions, we turn to certain things to help us get our bearings: clocks, to-do lists, phones…. And whatever it might be, our ways of waking are never neutral. They orient us strongly towards the world, making us self-confident, say, or complacent, or filled with a vague anxiety. Something as simple as a quick scroll can imply a whole story about what this world is, what the day ahead means, and how I should live in response.
For the followers of the risen Jesus, the importance of morning actually goes well beyond the need feel good about the day. Each daybreak is thick with God’s story, a moment charged with the knowledge of Christ’s resurrection. The coming of the light each morning is a reminder of Christ’s victory over darkness, a victory which, as the day unfolds, we look for signs of. Time, it turns out, is not simply one thing after another, but is the theatre of God’s action. Each day, it turns out, lies open to God’s saving purpose. So, down through the ages, Christians have sought to begin each day with praise and prayer, orienting themselves to the knowledge of God’s victory in Christ. We also need to learn to begin each day not with worry, or scrolling, or even just checking the weather, but by turning to God. Perhaps even more than earlier generations, we need to recover ways to step into “the day that the Lord has made”, that is, into the utterly remarkable everyday reality of life with Jesus Christ by the power of Spirit.
Here’s how one pastor put it to young Christian leaders living in the Third Reich:
For Christians the beginning of the day should not be burdened and oppressed with besetting concerns for the day’s work. At the threshold of the new day stands the Lord who made it. All the darkness and distraction of the dreams of night retreat before the clear light of Jesus Christ and his wakening Word. All unrest, all impurity, all care and anxiety flee before him. Therefore, at the beginning of the day let all distraction and empty talk be silenced and let the first thought and the first word belong to him to whom our whole life belongs. “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light!” (Ephesians 5:14).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
What might it look like to start the day like this, so that “the first thought and the first word belong to him to whom our whole life belongs”? One way is to take up a liturgy for morning prayer, such as those found in the various forms of Daily Office (or daily prayer). Here, you’ll find the ancient morning prayers of the Church; one of these is the Benedictus, or the Song of Zechariah. The exultant prayer of John the Baptist’s father recorded in Luke 1:68-79, this song of praise pulls us out of sleep and sets us before the panoramic window of God’s saving purposes. Is the sun up already? Yes, the dawn of resurrection life has broken upon you! What lies ahead in my day? Christ’s way of restorative peace, opened to me and to my neighbours through his saving faithfulness. What have I just remembered from yesterday? God is the same today: tender and compassionate, come to set people free from sin and evil, shining his light on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
This is our invitation: whether you begin with the Benedictus or another ancient morning prayer of the Church, let your first thought and your first word belong to God, so that what follows may be better marked by his good purpose.
