I met God in the morning when my day was at its best and His presence came like sunrise, like a glory in my breast. All day long the presence lingered, all day long God stayed with me and we sailed in perfect calmness on a very troubled sea. So I think I know the secret learned from many a troubled way: you must seek God in the morning, if you want Him through the day.
-- Cardinal Ralph S. Cushman

They say that between the hours of 3:00 and 5:00am, everything in the universe is right and at peace. They say that those quiet hours are consecrated and entrancing, that God is breathing air over all His creation and touching each of us in the places we need Him. They say that if you seek God during these very precious hours of the early morning, He lovingly seeps through you, filling every cell and tissue with needed oxygen and nutrients, pouring healing into every cleft and crevice left exposed from the previous day, and recalibrating your center so that you are full of His light. Seeking the divine presence of God at 3:00am provides the jolt necessary for the next 24 hours.

However, if you’re like most of us, at 3:00am you’re sleeping... hard, and nothing but the screech of the alarm will wake you. And on some days, even the alarm becomes a part of your dreams – is that the fire alarm going off in the 160-story building I just jumped from, or is that the hoot of the owl that caught me in mid-air and now we’re flying over the flaming Pacific headed toward 160 Owl Island?

But if you could somehow take advantage of this hallowed time, perhaps asking God to wake you at 3:00am so that you can spend quiet time with Him, soliciting His wake-up call before you go to bed, just maybe at 3:00am you will hear His call.

Maybe it’ll be a bird chirping near your window who, not so long before you, received her call to convene with the Master. Or maybe it’s a dog softly howling because it feels the sweet spirit of the One who comes to soothe and still. Perhaps it’ll be a bump in the night, like a book falling from a shelf, a book whose pages have held something for you to reflect on. Or, maybe your partner will breathe or shift differently, enough so that you hear the voice that says, “I’m here.”

However you are awakened to delight in those sacred hours, the blessings, power, and encouragement you receive will clothe you for the rest of your day. And who knows, you’ll probably have enough for the others of us who rode the owl on into the Pacific.

Sadiqqa © 2008