New Every Morning
Lamentations 3:22 · Luke 13:12 (NIV)
This Sunday, November 1, at 2 a.m. local time, most of the United States gets an hour back. NIST confirms that daylight saving time ends, and clocks fall back to 1 a.m. Many phones will change automatically. Some kitchen clocks and car dashboards will need a person to change them. Hawaii and most of Arizona do not observe daylight saving time.
For a lot of us, 2 a.m. is a familiar hour. We lie down tired, but our minds keep working. We rehearse conversations, worry about tomorrow, and try to solve things we cannot settle in the dark.
We can bring those concerns to GOD. HIS care continues while we rest.
The Bible says the same. "In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for he grants sleep to those he loves" (Psalm 127:2). Sleep is something GOD gives. Nobody earns it by worrying harder. And when sleep does not come, that is not a measure of our faith or of HIS love for us.
David, the shepherd who became king, wrote Psalm 4 as an evening prayer while people were speaking against him. Still he could say, "In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety" (Psalm 4:8).
Rest runs all through this week's readings. Luke tells a story about a woman who had not been able to stand up straight for eighteen years. "She was bent over and could not straighten up at all" (Luke 13:11). It happened on the Sabbath, the day GOD set aside for rest.
She did not ask JESUS for anything. Luke says, "When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, 'Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.' Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God" (Luke 13:12-13).
JESUS saw her before she said a word. Her healing began with HIS attention and ended with her praise. GOD often moves toward us that way, while we are still bent low and unable to look up.
A synagogue leader complained that healing was work and belonged on the other six days. JESUS answered, "Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?" (Luke 13:16).
Eighteen years is a long time to wait. JESUS treated her freedom as the perfect use of a day of rest.
A bishop named Irenaeus led the church in Lyon, in what is now France, around AD 180. He wrote about this very scene in Against Heresies, Book IV, chapter 8. He said that JESUS "loosed and vivified those who believe in Him as Abraham did," and that "the law did not prohibit men from being healed upon the Sabbaths." Rest and healing belong together.
Many of us are waiting for something too. We can keep asking GOD for help without carrying the responsibility of controlling every outcome.
That is where the book of Lamentations meets us. It speaks from the grief of Jerusalem’s fall. In the middle of that grief he wrote, "Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:21-23).
He went on. "I say to myself, 'The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him'" (Lamentations 3:24). Then, "The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD" (Lamentations 3:25-26). Waiting with GOD is a different thing from waiting alone.
New every morning. Whatever held us awake at 2 a.m., HIS compassion is already waiting at sunrise. We simply wake up to it, because GOD put it there.
David prayed in another psalm, "When I am in distress, I call to you, because you answer me" (Psalm 86:7). The same GOD hears the 2 a.m. prayer and greets us with fresh mercy at dawn.
So this weekend, when the clocks give back an hour, let it be a small reminder. GOD gives rest. HE sees the ones who have been bent over for a long time. HE calls them forward. And HIS mercy will be new again on Sunday morning, and every morning after that.
It does leave me thinking about the nights I have spent awake trying to do GOD's job for HIM.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
🙏 To the one awake at 2 a.m., HE grants sleep to those HE loves.
🙏 To the one bent over for years, JESUS sees you and calls you forward.
🙏 To the one still waiting, it is good to wait quietly for the LORD.
🙏 To the one dreading tomorrow, HIS compassions are new every morning.
Grace and Peace.