I truly believe that waking up much earlier than you need to every day comes naturally to only a few people. If you are like me, it is a battle to rise out of bed when that early morning alarm goes off. Tiredness is a reality for so many of us and it often becomes a major obstacle to spending more significant time in prayer.
For me, as a father of three children under the age of 5, sleep is a privilege, not a guarantee. If I am going to be sure that I can enter into 30 minutes of silent and uninterrupted prayer each day, I must begin a little after 5:00 am. Up until a few months ago, this was a true challenge for me and one that I found myself passing up on several times a week–even though I noticed that early morning prayer seemed to make more more patient and charitable throughout the day.
Recently, I have found the winter months to be even more challenging because of the dark and cold mornings. However, something changed a few weeks ago. I began to make waking up a part of my prayer. I began to make it my first offering to God. Doing so allowed me to reject the feeling of clicking snooze and cling to spending more time with God.
Specifically, things began to change when I would wake up and see my wife sleeping peacefully in bed. At this time, we still had our daughter Abigail sleeping in her bassinet in our room as well. I would see them both sleeping and say a prayer for them, offering my tiredness for their sake. Everything changed when I began to do this small act of charity. Everything changed when I began to make waking up an intentional sacrifice. I no longer dreaded waking up, I was ready and willing to make that offering.
Doing so enabled me to have more time with Christ each day. It also provided me with a different vision of how sacrifice creates fertile soil for fruitful prayer time. In the very act of waking up we can begin our prayer to the Father. That small sacrifice becomes a way for us to be united to Christ and accept the invitation He gives us each day to spend more time with Him.
The tiredness that I felt didn’t go away. The desire to clock snooze rather than wake up didn’t really fade either. The only thing that changed was my perspective. I began to see that my tiredness was a small offering that I could make for my wife and daughter. While seemingly insignificant (and definitely not earth-shattering) that offering has allowed me to rediscover that prayer turns us into Christ.
Thomas Aquinas described prayer as “an expression of man’s desire for God.” When we go to pray we are responding to Jesus’ desire to be with us. The acceptance of the prayer invitation is truly about our desire to know and experience the living God. My prayer offering has shown me this fact while also revealing the truth that prayer makes us more like the One that we spend time with. While the sacrifice of our tiredness is small, it turns us into people who are more willing to make sacrifices. Jesus’ ultimate action of love is seen on the cross – in the laying down of his life for you and for me.
When we turn simple actions into offerings of sacrifice we begin to mirror Christ. The more we mirror Christ, the more we desire to become like him because we are being turned into who we were made to be.
The many morning’s that I chose sleep instead of prayer, I decided that a few extra minutes of sleep was better for me than union with God. Those decisions were about my wants rather than what God wanted for me. Once I made my exhaustion a sacrifice for my wife and daughter, the very act of waking up became a prayer that made me desire to pray more. Sleeping in was about me. Waking up was about God and my loved ones.
As we continue to journey through the cold and dark months, may we make the decision to offer our tiredness for love of someone else. In doing so, we will find that choosing prayer over sleeping late results in intimacy with the One who was willing to give His life in order to spend eternity with us.
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For more on morning prayer and morning offerings, see The Morning Offering: An Invitation to Intimacy and The Best Prayer for a Busy Day: The Morning Offering.
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