Tempted to Hide Under the Covers?

Have you ever just wanted to stay in bed all day?  Have you wished that you didn't have to face whatever is ahead of you?  Are you tempted to pull the covers over your head and hide?

I love the way that the Message translate this portion of Scripture from Isaiah 53:

The Master, God, has given me    a well-taught tongue,So I know how to encourage tired people.    He wakes me up in the morning,Wakes me up, opens my ears    to listen as one ready to take orders.The Master, God, opened my ears,    and I didn’t go back to sleep,    didn’t pull the covers back over my head.

God calls us each day to encourage tired people.  He is the one who wakes up every morning (even if it is with the assistance of an alarm clock, a screaming toddler, or a teenager or young adult who is just getting home :-)  

I used to attend a church decades ago and over and over again people in that church would thank God for waking them up in the morning and giving them one more day to live.  I loved (and still love) the idea that if God woke me up today and gave me another day of life that I need to be grateful for simply the gift of one more day and give that day back to him.

So God wakes us up, opens our years and wants us to listen and be ready to take orders.  And here is the choice we have each day…. we can listen carefully and get up and obey or we can go back to sleep and put the covers over our heads.

Literally that might not be possible.  Nobody can spend their entire day in bed (although I have three adult children right now who are testing that theory, but I digress).  But certainly metaphorically we have two choices:

We can wake up, listen to what God is calling us to do, take orders and get busy, or we can pull the covers back over our heads and go back to sleep.

The choice is yours today and every day.  

Keith Green wrote a powerful song that I memorized back in my teens.  He always wrote and sang with such conviction…. 

Oh, can't you see such sin?!
The world is sleeping in the dark, 
That the church just can't fight,
'cause it's asleep in the light!
How can you be so dead?!
When you've been so well fed
Jesus rose from the grave,
And you!
You can't even get out of bed!

You can hear Keith himself sing it here.   If this doesn’t wake you up, I’m not sure what will.