Thursday, December 29, 2005

Early Rising

Did you ever wake up at 3 A.M. with your brain bursting with ideas? Maybe a warming trend set in and the room was about 10 degrees above normal. Maybe you slept real good for the last few nights, and you didn't do much yesterday.

This is a fairly normal thing to happen-- to me at least, and it's not without precedent. Jesus arose a great while before day and went up into the mountain.

John Wesley made a life long habit of (very) early rising-- for two hours of prayer and Bible Study before anybody else woke up. It was probably this that gave him the phenominal energy level that allowed him to preach constantly during the daylight hours and sleep in the saddle going to the next station, and he did that for sixty years. What a man!

Beside him I'm just a pigmy, but some fortunate things happened to me in my youth. Near the end of World War II I was solo operator on a steamer going back and forth between New Orleans and South and Central America. My hours were pretty cockeyed: beginning at 2:45 A.M., then a few hours at a time with a few hours off ending around 8 P.M. or so.

I got in the habit of that early rising. Well life intervened; I had to punch a clock at 8 every morning, and I was forced to keep more conventional hours. But now, free as a bird, with the checks coming in every month no matter what or where I am, what a life! I used to say that life begins at 40, then at 50, then at retirement!

And this early rising is a sometime gift. Every once in a while I get up early (like this morning), drink a cuppa, and knock out a couple of posts-- glory be.

7 comments:

George Breed said...

Larry, a toast to early rising! Have been getting up early since a child -- several paper routs, helping my Dad on his bread route. I love it. A habit I do not want to break.

twila said...

I love waking early and feeling like I have all this extra time!!

Hey, Happy Birthday! I don't know when it is (or was) but I seem to remember it being sometime around now.

Just picked up "Plan B" and I loved the first paragraph so much I immediately gave it away. So, I'm off to get another copy or two. I thank God for folks like Anne and you, who give me hope and inspiration.

Unknown said...

I was up between 2:30 and 3 myself this morning. Can't say i did anything too productive -- watched Miami CSI rerun and surfed past the televangelists and infomercials.

Jon said...

I woke (deliberately) at 3:45 am this morning and watched the last half of Waking Life.

Then I went back to bed, hoping to have a lucid dream. :)

I'm a night owl, Larry.

Larry Clayton said...

Thanks for all these comments, friends; it's nice to learn that someone is still interested in what I may have written. Truthfully a good part of what makes us (at least me) tick is to give and receive strokes to and from one another. That's a homely way of carrying out the Lord's admonition that we 'love one another'. You guys are all loving and lovable.

crystal said...

Hi Larry. I never wake up early at 3:00am but instead I'm usually still awake then :-). I really like that time of morning - so quiet and peaceful and the most interesting movies come on tv then.

Larry Clayton said...

yes