I've been pushing it these last couple of weekends. Working on our on-line worship service--deep into Saturday night, and around the bend into Sunday morning. Last night, pushing on 4 am, I heard the morning birds begin to sing as I finished up the benediction and put the project to bed. Eyes glassy. Mouth parched. Soul tired.When I was in grad school, no one had heard a peep about email or the world wide web. Skype? Zoom? Foh-geht-a-baht-it! Never in my wildest imagination did I think I'd be doing ministry, pastoral care, prophetic witness this way. Ugh. My fingers are too dang chubby for the keyboard. Let alone my iPhone.
But there I am, 4 in the morning on a Sunday, brushing my teeth, turning down the bed and tossing around hermeneutics and politics with the morning birds on the porch. I'm pretty sure this schedule's not sustainable, and I'm glad for that. But for these first few weeks, it's something like a practice of resurrection, a practice of grace in the midst of so much anxiety, so much illness, so much uncertainty and doubt. I sit with all these pictures, little bits of video, ancient texts and hymns, and I piece them together all night long. And then, at that point of total exhaustion, just as I reach the point of blindness and impotence, I hear God's sweet sentinels of morning. The birds that rise before light's even a possibility. The birds that sing before gospel's even in the air.
Morning has broken.
