Waking Up

NT Wright uses the analogy of waking up as metaphor for life in Christ. There are those who wake up suddenly ,as if by an alarm, and get out of bed and get going. There are those who lay in bed half-asleep, half-awake, groggy but slowly rising to face the new day. Of course, he states, most of us know some of both of these and there are many other ways in between.

So I began to think about how I usually wake up. Unless I have stayed up too late, I usually wake up before the alarm. Many times if I know what time I need to awaken, my body will begin to rouse me back to consciousness just before that time.

I say all this because I think it's how God wakes me in my life as well. (With awakening now being one of my favorite metaphors of His Spirit's quickening in me!) Usually He will begin to impress/speak to/say something to me- quietly, wooingly - just before He sends it very loudly. It is an awakening before the blare of the alarm (with the alarm being the decisive indicator that it's time to get up and get moving).

So it is no wonder over the past couple of weeks that as I've prayed and thought, I've heard the stirring whicpers of "awaken sleeper". I've been thanking God for the sense that I get that I'm waking up in my life - to beauty, to creativity, to Him, to family, to my perspective on work and money, to trust. I've been deeply impressed with these images but much like shadows in the early morning light - difficult to define, blurry with few clear edges.

Then, as in true God fashion (in my life)...the alarm. I have just finished reading a section in Simply Christian, a section that like the intruding ring of the alarm moves me to get out of bed and get going. A section with these alarm words - "Wake up sleeper! Rise from the dead! Christ will give you light." (Eph. 5:14) A section that says this:

"God intends, in the end, to give us a new life, in comparison with which the present one is a mere thing of shadows. He intends to give us new life within his ultimate new creation. But the new creation has already begun with the resurrection of Jesus, and God wants us to wake up now, in the present time, to the new reality. We are to come through death and out the other side into a new sort of life; to become daytime people, even though the rest of the world isn't yet awake. We are to live in the present darkness by the light of Christ, so that when the sun comes up at last we will be ready for it. Or, to change the image, we are already to be penciling the sketches for the masterpiece that God will one day call us to help him paint."