Waking Inspiration
Friday (November 7)
Waking Inspiration
Psalm 57:8-9
Awake, my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations.
We tend to save celebrations for those special occasions when we have something tangible to celebrate, don’t we? We’ll mark our calendars for family birthdays and national holidays and summer vacations to the beach and skiing trips and weddings and football watch-parties at church, and we await those days with excited expectation, even if we’re a little stressed as they loom. In other words, it’s natural for us to wait until good news comes through, or till we get an invitation from a friend, or till our boss offers us a raise, or till we’re sitting on a warm beach in the Caribbean, before our heart rises to rejoice. That is, we don’t tend to dance for joy until some external force initiates that response. We’re reactionary by nature. On bad days, when illness strikes or our boss fires us or our car breaks down, we tend to spend our time crying out in frustrated anguish. On mediocre days, when not much is going on around us, we tend to go through the motions of our routines, neither feeling too excited nor too despondent. On high days, when great news and great opportunities and great encouragement meet us by surprise, we turn up the dial of gratitude and let the praises ring. Sometimes praising comes easy, sometimes it doesn’t enter our minds, and sometimes it’s the opposite of what we feel in the moment.
But notice that David isn’t reactionary here; he’s proactive. He doesn’t wake up to a crisp fall morning with sunlight slipping through his windowsill before rising to rejoice. No he effectively calls out to his fingers that will strum the lyre, and to the lyre itself, and even to early morning not yet bathing in sunlight, to WAKE UP! He doesn’t wait for the Wednesday-night Bible Study or the Sunday morning worship service to sing. He doesn’t wait for the doctor’s report or the confirmation letter or the clouds to clear before celebrating. He leads the way with the gratefulness of his voice and the forward movement of his footsteps, not waiting around for inspiration, but awakening it.
May we do likewise today.