Rainy Sunday Mornings

It was 7:30 a few Sunday mornings ago, and I had to get ready for an early church service. The problem:  it was pouring outside, so staying in bed seemed like a more and more appealing option as the minutes passed. Nobody was banging on my bedroom door to get me up. I was on my own, my dwindling will power versus the comfort of sleeping in. It's a pretty frequent struggle for me. 

You see, I've never been what you would call a morning person. For about the first twenty minutes after waking up, I look like an extra from the Walking Dead, minus the blood and gore (usually). I start feeling like a real human being shortly before lunch time, only thanks to a few cups of coffee and a gradual de-fogging of my brain. I've always admired people who can wake up and immediately be cheery and aware, but my attempts to become a functional person in the morning have generally ended in failure. For many years, especially as a student studying late into the evening, I had a propensity for forming grand plans to go to sleep early and get up early in the morning when (I would convince myself) my mind would be fresh. Nine and a half times out of ten, I only woke up when I absolutely needed to e.g. to go to work or class. My mind tends to go to great lengths to fabricate any number of thought processes or sets of reasons why leaving my bed is a terrible idea. 

And yet, I did get up that Sunday. I got ready and drove to church, albeit arriving there a little late. It ranks high as one of the most difficult things I did all week. I'm aware that that I'm probably making a more dramatic deal out of it than I should. Lots of people have trouble getting up early on the weekends; I'm not unique in that. But on my way out of church, feelings of gratitude for how much my relationship with God has changed over the last few years washed over me. When I was a kid, my parents usually forced me to go with them to church (which I'm thankful for). In college and grad school, it wasn't something I needed to worry about, since I was agnostic for most of that time. But now, as a single adult Christian, it's purely up to me whether I go to church or not. 

Thank God, that decision is now an easy one to make. The truth is that Sunday mornings are the part of the week that I look forward to the most, in spite of what my “early morning mentality” tries to convince me of. Like exercising or eating well, it's a choice that I know I'll be glad I made later on. My Sunday morning routine goes a long way in helping me survive the upcoming week, making whatever challenges and drudgery I encounter much more bearable. After an early service and three Bible studies, I return home at one o'clock feeling renewed, inspired, and closer to God. 

That feeling of closeness to God is both the cause and a main result of the way I choose to spend my Sunday mornings. For most of my life, God seemed like a far-away entity. I viewed him as something we should worship because he's the creator of the universe,  sometimes interfering in life down here via miracles but otherwise distant and inaccessible. I got my first taste of how intimate a relationship with God can actually be through talking to Muslims about how the five daily prayers had enriched their lives. At times, I could observe the positive effect it had on their very faces, for those few moments during and after prayer seeming as if none of the cares or evils of the world could touch them. It was as if, in the act of lowering their foreheads to the floor in submission, they had touched God and were now under his complete protection. But no matter how hard I tried and how persistently I prayed for that feeling of connection, I could never get to the point of proximity to God I had witnessed in other people. Only when I came to know Christ and was marked by him as his own did God grant me a glimpse of the kind of peace He can bring, as well as an awareness of the kind of close relationship He wants us to have with Him, a relationship made possible through the gift of His Son. 

I'm convinced that a constant feeling of connection to God isn't something that we can really achieve in this life. It waxes and wanes, since at heart we are fickle and imperfect creatures. Nor am I naïve enough to think that a church service is the only time we can feel His presence, or that going to church every week is an absolute necessity for being a “good” Christian. But that weekly morning worship goes a long way in maintaining and renewing that connection, that relationship, and helping me to realize how much my life has changed day by day because of Him. God has given me everything, more than I can ever begin to pay back. The least I can do is wake up early on a rainy Sunday morning.