Morning Mercies

 

There's a part along my walking route where I'm on top of a small hill.  This morning I turned around to this.  And while I much prefer a more natural setting from which to view the dawn of day, it seems to me that even cityscapes with large metal towers can't help but be brought into the glory of a sunrise.

That's two in a row now.  Morning walks that is.  In a 'before the move' season, a sunrise walk was a given once the weather was warm enough and the timing was good.  Usually that would have started way before now, but...here I am well into May and only out twice for a first in the morning go at it.

I gotta' say, being greeted by all the morning glory, and whatever shy company peeks out from the brush, is very motivating.  And something of a needed reminder.

It's quite a well-used trail during the day; back and forth to school, lots of bikes, a nicer way to get to the many businesses along Highland just before it meets up with Westmount.  In the mornings, however, it's just me and my forest friends.

I'm glad for the extra motivation to start my day this way.  More importantly, I needed the reminder of the holy hush embedded in the early hours.  There's something about the sky - at any time and in any state - that reminds you that you're not in charge.  That productivity is good but not God.  That lists might help organize your life but they are not Lord over it.  That I have so little to prove, and so much to be.

Forgetting these things over the past several weeks has left me tired in ways familiar and worrisome.  My body is suggesting to me, in various and obvious ways, that I may have asked too much of it lately, given a 'complicated' root canal was included amongst the other 'extras' on the calendar.  I don't think I took this into enough consideration, at least not enough to make adequate adjustment.  

As a result, it's not just my body that's tired.  My spirit struggles to keep up with unrealistic expectations.  My mind looks for a place to sit down and rest.  I'm just not the me I want to be. 

So yesterday, and today, I'm taking it easy.  Which isn't so "easy" for some of us.  But needful and good, and another way of honouring the humanity God has so lavishly gifted.

I don't know why, exactly, I keep needing these review lessons on my way to 'being formed into the likeness of Christ for the sake of others' (M. Robert Mulholland's definition of spiritual formation, and I like it a lot).  You'd think by now I would get this work/rest balance bit right.  But sometimes it sneaks up on me.   And that's when I am ever so glad for grace.  

And new mercies every morning.