The Small Hours

The book is called Lamentations, and it earns the name, for it is the weeping of a prophet over a ruined city, over Jerusalem burned and her people carried away, over grief so total that the writer says his soul is removed far off from peace. And yet in the very center of this book of tears, at its lowest point, there is a turning, a sudden shaft of light through the darkness. This I recall to my mind, he says, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.

Mark where this hope is found, not in the lifting of the ruin, for the ruin remained, but in the midst of it. The city was still ash; the exile was still real; nothing in the circumstances had changed. And there, in the unchanged ruin, the prophet found the mercies of God new every morning. This is a hope that does not depend on rescue from the trouble, but on the faithfulness of God within it, and it is therefore a hope that cannot be taken away by any circumstance, for it rests not on the circumstance but on the God who is faithful in it.

MERCY IN THE RUINS

It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed. Sometimes this is the whole of the daily mercy, that we are not consumed, that we have survived the night, that there is breath in us and a morning before us though everything else is lost. In the depths of trouble the mercy may not be that the trouble is gone but simply that we are not destroyed by it, that God’s compassions have held us together one more day. And this is no small mercy, though it feels small in the ruins. That we are here at all, not consumed, with a new morning given, is itself the sign that his compassions have not failed.

And the morning itself becomes a daily sign of his renewing faithfulness. Every dawn is a small resurrection, a new beginning granted, mercy renewed with the light. Weeping may endure for a night, the psalmist sings, but joy cometh in the morning. The night is real, and its weeping is real, but it is a night, and it has a morning appointed to it, and with the morning come mercies new and unfailing. The God who meets us in the dawn is the God whose compassions are fresh each day, and the rising sun is his standing promise that they are.

NEW EVERY MORNING

They are new every morning. The mercies do not grow stale, do not run low, do not have to be rationed from a dwindling store. Each day brings a fresh supply, sufficient for that day, and we are prone to two errors about it, both of which the manna in the wilderness was given to correct. The first is to try to live today on yesterday’s mercy, as though the grace of a past encounter could carry us through a present trouble. It cannot, any more than yesterday’s manna could be eaten today; it must be gathered fresh. The second is to borrow tomorrow’s trouble into today, dreading a future for which today’s mercy was never meant. The mercy is metered to the morning. Give us this day, the Lord taught us to pray, our daily bread.

So the discipline of the small hours is to rise each morning and receive the mercy that is new that day, not carrying yesterday’s despair into today as though God’s compassions had failed in the night, and not straining toward tomorrow’s fears. Satisfy us early with thy mercy, the psalmist prays, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning, prays another. There is a receiving of mercy that belongs to the beginning of the day, before the trouble rises, a coming fresh to God for the fresh supply he has ready, and the soul that keeps this morning appointment finds the day met by a mercy equal to it.

GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS

And the ground of all this daily mercy is named in three words, great is thy faithfulness. The mercies are new every morning not because we have earned a fresh supply, not because we have been faithful, but because he is faithful. Our faithfulness fails; his does not. If we believe not, the apostle says, yet he abideth faithful; he cannot deny himself. The renewing of the mercies rests entirely on the unfailing faithfulness of God, which is why they are as sure as his own character, as certain as his own being. The morning will not fail to bring its mercy, because God will not fail to be faithful, and faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.

This is the rock beneath the daily mercy, that it depends not on us but on him. If it depended on our faithfulness, it would be as uncertain as we are, failing when we fail, running out when we run dry. But it depends on his faithfulness, which is great, and unchanging, and everlasting, and so the mercy is as reliable as the sunrise, as sure as the God who sends it. Great is thy faithfulness. There is the anchor of every troubled morning, not our steadiness, which is nothing, but his, which is everything.

THE MORNING WATCH

There is a wisdom in giving God the morning, in meeting him at the day’s beginning before the world has laid its hand on us. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD, the psalmist says; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. In the morning. Before the business rises and the noise begins and the cares of the day crowd in, the soul turns first to God, directs its prayer to him, and looks up. The morning watch sets the whole day under God before anything else has claimed it, and the day so begun goes differently from the day that begins with the world.

The Lord himself kept this watch. Rising up a great while before day, the Gospel says, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. In the busiest season of his work, with the whole town seeking him, he rose before the light to be alone with the Father first, giving the first and freshest hours to God before the crowds could claim him. If the Son of God found the morning watch needful, how much more do we, who are so easily swept away by the day the moment it begins, and who need, before we are caught up in it, to have met the God whose mercies are new that morning.

For the morning is the hinge of the day, and how we begin it largely governs how we go through it. The soul that rises and rushes at once into the day’s demands, unmet by God, is carried along by the day, at the mercy of its pressures and its moods. But the soul that meets God first, that receives the new mercy of the morning before the day begins, that directs its prayer and looks up, goes into the day anchored, having taken its bearings from God before the currents could seize it. Give the first-fruits of the day to God, and the rest of the day is offered in them.

This need not be long, for it is not the length but the priority that matters, the giving to God of the first and not the last, the freshest and not the leftover, of our waking hours. A soul may direct its prayer and look up in the first quiet moments of consciousness, before it reaches for anything else, and so set the whole day beneath God. The morning watch is the daily receiving of the daily mercy, the meeting with the faithful God at the day’s threshold, and it is worth rising for, worth the guarding of those first hours against everything that would seize them.

So begin each morning by receiving the mercy that is new that day. Do not carry yesterday’s despair into today, as though his compassions had failed in the dark; they did not, and the very morning is the proof. Do not try to live on old grace nor borrow tomorrow’s fears, but take today’s mercy for today. And rest the whole of it not on your own faithfulness, which fails, but on his, which is great. For even in the ruins his mercies do not fail, and they are new every morning, and great, past all our failing, is his faithfulness.