Wake the Dawn...

There are so many things to be thankful for.

But you must as the Psalmist says, "Wake the Dawn."

The difference between the dawn waking you and you waking the dawn is the difference between life happening to you and you happening to life.

So many days I think we wake up and "hope for the best". Crossing our fingers, we wish upon a shooting star. This is Disney, not Christianity.

To wake the dawn we must awaken life around us. We must "get their first". We must "proactivate" instead of "reactivate". The more we waiting for our "ship to come in" or for our "luck to change" the longer we will dwell in a wilderness of wishful thinking. Wishful thinking has never changed a thing...things get tabled, conversations are congested with deliberations, and we live in suspension...suspending life, delaying takeoffs...our days become a living layover...neither taking off nor landing. Holding patterns. Gridlock.

But to "wake the dawn" is to beat life to the punch. To inform life as to what will transpire. To live with "priority" which literally means that "prior to something happening, you have already decided what will be." Thus "prior"ity. I will say it again, you don't wait to see what you will do in the event that something occurs, you occur before the event and tell it what will happen based on prior perspectives, prior objectives. You don't wait for the morning to wake you up, you wake it up. You get a jump start on the day, you are the early bird that gets the worm, the world is your ouster, you are sucking the marrow out of life.

This is where we get the Latin term "Carpe Diem"...Seize the Day. You lay hold of life. Paul even said this in Phil. 3 when he stated "I want to take hold of that for which Christ told hold of me." As a result he said, "So I press on toward the prize of the high calling of Jesus Christ". Earlier he mused, "Forgetting what is behind..." This is a heart that understands the duty of man to seize life before life seizes him.

So I will end as I began. Today is a beautiful day with so much to be thankful for. It is waiting for me to tell it what to do and where to go. If I don't lead this dance, it will take the lead for me. And when that happens. We're tripping over each other's feet.

I was made to "exercise dominion over life, to subdue it, to care for it, to cultivate it". God stated this clearly in Genesis and when I don't, life doesn't go well at all.

Today I woke the dawn...

and ironically, I feel more awake myself.