I’ve recently joined a Facebook group called The Five O’Clock Club. It’s a group of Mum’s endeavoring to get up early to spend time with God before their children wake up. For me, it’s more like the 6.20 Club, as my children don’t usually wake before 7. The mornings I’ve managed to get up and spend some quiet time with God over a yummy cup of coffee I’ve really enjoyed and found valuable for my day.
However, those mornings are less than half of my mornings, as late/broken/too short nights of sleep don’t make getting up early easy or even maybe the best use of my time. Often those extra 30 minutes sleep are all that comes between Nice Mummy and Scary-Lack-Of -Sleep-Can’t-Even-Fake-Patience-Mummy!
Let’s face it, we all need sleep, and so I try not to feel guilty about the mornings I don’t manage that 30 minutes of quiet meeting with Jesus. Instead, I’m cultivating Moments of Connection. I really want to be a conduit for Jesus’ presence in the lives of my family and the people we meet each day, so I’m trying to be filled with Him whenever I can, so that as I give out I have something to give from.
Recently, I’ve been surprised to discover Moments of Connection over children’s story books. Not Christians ones, just normal story books. Such as The Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson. If you’ve not read it, here it is on YouTube but the basics of the story are this: There’s a mean highway rat who takes everyone’s food. “The Highway Rat grew terribly fat from eating up everyone’s dinner.” Then a duck appears and tricks the rat into getting lost in a dark cave. She then rides his horse back to ‘her hungry friends’ and gives them their food back.
“Then they shared out the food from the saddle bags and feasted all night long.
Bright were the flames of the bonfire, loud was the music and song,
Wild was the moonlight dancing, merry the cheer and chat,
For now they could live in freedom safe from the Highway Rat.”
It suddenly struck me that the rat was a bit like the devil, who comes to kill, steal and destroy, and the duck a bit like Jesus, who went and got all those good things back for us, allowing us to live in freedom.
Then there was the Snail and the Whale, where the snail writes words in her trail which change both her destiny and the life of a hump back whale. How powerful words are! God’s words, which created the world, Jesus’ words which speak life into our lives, our words which can build up and transform people.
I’ve always known it, but these’s story revelations of Jesus helped me remember that a quiet time before everyone is up is only one way of me connecting with God, or should I say Him connecting with me! How will He connect with you today?