Spanish and Portuguese have a word for it: madrugada. It’s that time after midnight until morning. It’s that time when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to a sound sleep again, usually because you’re thinking about what you didn’t do the day before or what you need to do when you finally rouse yourself up from bed.
Even as fresh air wafts in through the window and you’re under the covers, your mind, rather than settling back down, begins to race. You think: should I keep tossing and turning or try to do something useful? What useful thing can you do at 2 or 3 AM?
You then remember stories of monks and nuns doing matins at 2 o’clock in the morning, a service of prayer and hymns, and you ask yourself, did they then go back to sleep until 6 AM, the time for lauds, the morning prayers? You let a psalm run through your mind, feel the presence of God enveloping you, and settle back into sleep.
Prayer for the Day
Your Presence comes to us in the night, O God
Stirring us to awaken, to search for your light;
Your Spirit seeks to calm us as we fret over the day to come,
Embracing us as a mother holds her child.
Enfold us, O Holy One, and grant us your peace,
The peace that passes all understanding
In the name of the One who embodies your Presence,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
It takes practice to become proficient at something. Practicing the presence of God will make us good at it.
R. Alan Woods, writer, from The Journey Is The Destination: A Photo Journal
It is required to find the infinitely big inside of what’s infinitely small to feel the prence of God.
Pythagoras, Greek philosopher (570-495)
Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast
If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me become night,”
Even the darkness is not dark to you, the night is as bright as day,
For darkness is as light to you.
Psalm 139: 7-11