Not enough sleep

I bet we’ve all been awake in the pre-dawn darkness of the early morning. Sometimes intentionally as we prepare for a trip or a busy day. Other times—unintentionally because our sleep is interrupted by something. Pre-dawn. Not the darkness of midnight, inky and enduring. In the pre-dawn we know in a very short while the sun will bring brightness to a new day. Still it’s quiet as midnight, though as dawn approaches we likely will hear the birds coming awake, whistling the day’s start.

The pre-dawn can be a peaceful time. Even though we hadn’t planned to wake so early, we notice we don’t feel tired. We may stretch and smile to ourselves, feeling the delicious feeling of extra time we’ve stolen from sleep--what the French sometimes refer to as the petit morte, or little death.

But, this dark, quiet time may more often be unsettling. We may look at the clock and know we just haven’t rested enough for the hard day ahead. We long to slip back into Morpheus’ arms and dream pleasant dreams, but we know it’s not likely. Unbidden and troubling thoughts peck at us like crows ripping into corncobs. We toss and turn, cursing our minds that won’t rest.
The Old Testament lesson for Sunday from Samuel plunges us into such a pre-dawn time for the youth, Samuel. He hears a voice and, as the writer reminds us, hasn’t yet come to know the Lord, and so assumes it is his mentor Eli. Once, twice, three times, he rises and goes to Eli asking, “You called me father Eli?” Eli thinking Samuel must be having a bad dream, sends him back to bed, one, twice, but then Eli knows the truth. “Samuel, my beloved, it is not I who called you, but our Lord. Go back to your bed and if he calls again say, ‘Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

Darkness is not always about literal night time. Samuel, as young and as pure as he must have been, was in a kind of darkness. Though he lived in a shrine and slept only steps away from the Ark of the Covenant, he did not know the Lord. Perhaps part of the reason can be seen in the beginning of this story. It begins with an awful statement: “the word of the Lord was rare in those days.”

Without question, each of us has experienced our own dark times in which it must have seemed if the word of the Lord was rare—or non-existent. What bleak and empty times those are! Worse than the pain of a pre-dawn struggle, black as midnight. And we’ve also known those times when God was calling to us and we weren’t sure we knew whose voice it was. We knew we were troubled, but we couldn’t be certain whether the voice was from God or elsewhere. Maybe it was our own inner self speaking but bereft of any direction from God. Troubling times. But maybe the worst are those times when we’ve heard the voice and finally know it is the Lord, but it is the Lord asking something that leaves us unsettled, even afraid.

God told Samuel to deliver a terrible blow to Eli. Samuel had to tell Eli God would soon take his two evil sons. And Eli would become separated from God because he did nothing to stop his sons from their evil actions. So separated that no sacrifice could atone. Samuel, loved Eli and searched for a way to avoid telling him, just as we may avoid responding to God’s call to us to leave what is secure and comfortable. But in the end, Samuel obeys.

God often asks us to move from what we know to what we don’t know, from where we are secure, to insecurity. Think Abram asked as an old man to leave Ur and go to an unknown destination to found a new nation. Think Moses asked to leave his place of privilege in Egypt to lead God people back to Israel. Think Paul, asked to give up his Jewish religion and his place of honor and become a wandering preacher. But God doesn’t just ask such things of great religious figures, whose response is immortalized in Scripture. God asks all of us at some time or the other, in some way or the other, to listen to his bidding and then do what may seem undoable, distasteful, frightening or unsettling.

Please know, that when this happens, God will understand if you hesitate or are reluctant. God will understand if you try to bargain your way out of doing it, whether the “it” be great or small. God will understand if you toss and turn in the midnight dark or the pre-dawn glow, trying to come to terms with your fear. And through it all, God will be with you to give you the peace and the courage to act. It just requires that you quit struggling and say, as Eli did, when Samuel finally told him, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.” When you can do that, peace will come over you and all will be well.

Peace,

Jerry+