Every day brings a sunrise, whether we can see it or not. Five minutes after I took this photo, the clouds rushed in ahead of a fast-moving storm, over San Antonio, Texas.

Approx. 6:30 min.

I feel exhausted, from a long hot summer. Exhausted from the Delta surge. Exhausted from outsized weather events. Exhausted from news of countries blowing up, caving in, shaking down, falling apart.

Exhausted from news of devastated landscapes, raging wildfires, earth-ripping rains, vast arid wastelands, desiccated waterways, dead fish, dead birds, dead colonies of pollinator bees.

What I feel is Biblical exhaustion, the kind the prophets talked about. 

Perhaps you feel exhausted, too.

But exhaustion, I discover, also is a messenger. Like you, I stand at a threshold, poised for a fierce invitation that will disrupt my exhaustion. Like the angel, a Divine Disruptor, who insists that Elijah, deeply exhausted, eat the hearth cake and drink the jug of water.

“Press on!” the angel says. “Eat and press on!”

So the Divine Disruptor arrives at dawn, at the start of Morning Prayer.

On my knees, on the rug in my prayer space, forehead to the floor toward the dawn light, I feel a phrase erupt from the depths of night, scattering sparkle-dust like a rocket on the Fourth of July.

A phrase is all it is, two words, weighing less than a feather from an angel’s wing.

The phrase?

Surprise me!

The phrase hangs like thin vapor in the still early hour.

Outside my open window Mother Song Sparrow breaks into a long warbling trill of Morning Praise.

Surprise me! the Divine Disruptor whispers again. In case I missed the first announcement.

I scramble up off my knees and onto my prayer bench, light the oil lamp before the sacred icon of Holy Trinity, and open my book to the psalms of the day’s Morning Prayer.

Surprise me! 

My arms go up, reaching high in an arc, as a smile breaks across my face.

Holy Trinity appears fully disposed to receive what I feel impelled to say.

And so I say, aloud, as though to disrupt the silence of the waning night: Surprise me!

There. I said it. The phrase floats up from the depths, lifting clean up and out of the space of exhaustion and world-weariness. A phrase that heralds the dawn of a new day.

Where prayer begins, where it goes

I’ll be honest with you. I never would have imagined these simple words erupting from my soul, not from the weight and dust and rubble of countries that blow up, cave in, shake down, fall apart, and the devastated landscapes and wastelands and waterways, not from the weight of dead fish and dead birds and dead colonies of pollinator bees.

See, I do something new! the prophet Isaiah proclaims. Do you not perceive it?

Well, I still have to squint toward the horizon and admit: No, not exactly.

But the latch has been thrown back, and the gate creaks open a wee bit as the first ray of morning sun rolls down the long stretch of hill, from horizon to me.

Prayer, I notice, begins deep within. You may know the feeling. A stirring, really.

A stirring not of me but within me. A stirring, really, of Holy Spirit.

This is why the unimagined, unscripted prayer always comes as a surprise. It is the living, breathing something new of which the prophet speaks.

Something holy is going on, here.

Surprise me!

Prayer, I discover, begins in the heart of Holy Trinity, long before I wake up. Ready to steal into my soul and stir me from my exhaustion.

And where does prayer go? Straight to the heart of Holy Trinity. 

Not Holy Trinity “out there” but Holy Trinity deep within. Deep within the inner hidden chamber of the heart, at the Table of the Great Communio.

Rouse yourself, eat, else you will not be ready

Jesus urges a life of readiness. 

Think ahead, he says; bring provisions, oil for your lamps; keep watch at the gate of your soul, lest the enemy find a way in—especially in the dark night.

Rouse yourself, especially when you are drowsy from the overwhelming weight of the moment. Be ready. Watch. And pray.

But how, exactly, can I be ready, when every day the news hits me with yet more stories of upheaval, heartbreak, mayhem, and death?

How shall I gird myself? How many flasks of oil must I bring?

I live in Earthquake Country. We’re waiting for The Big One, the Slingshot that will propel us across the time zone.

Well, some of us are waiting. Most are partying, dozing, or otherwise distracted.

Maybe you live in Hurricane Country, Tornado Alley, along a rapidly shrinking coastline, in a newly parched land, a war zone, a land simmering with unease.

What does Ready look like?

As Jesus comes frighteningly close to his time of betrayal and arrest, his trial, and ultimately his crucifixion, he says, cryptically, to his closest band: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives peace do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled. (John 14:27)

Disciplines of readiness for our times

So we know that the first discipline in being ready is to actually embrace the Lord’s peace. To own it and fully embrace it. Especially in times when everything is falling apart, just as he gave the gift when things were falling apart for him.

Peace is both a gift and the absolute essential if we are to navigate our own harried times as witnesses to his life, his love, his death and resurrection.

The second discipline of readiness? Watch, and pray.

Watch the news, the daily writing of history. Pay attention. Notice things.

But watch only as much as you need. As soon as the heart, the soul, says: Okay, I get it. Stop the reel; go and pray, then stop the reel and go and pray.

Any input beyond this point, the urge toward compulsive doom-scrolling, will hurl you into the vortex, the toxic stew of anxiety. 

Do not go there.

“Your kingdom come!” Jesus prays, and urges us to pray. Why? Because he always did believe that the reign of God—the Land of the Rightside Up—is possible! We must believe the same.

Now the third discipline of readiness: Notice what breaks your heart. Notice what injustices call up righteous anger within you. Notice what seemingly intractable circumstances cry out for imaginative response, advocacy, hands-on merciful acts, the many forms of justice, compassion, generosity, hope, joy.

Are you at a loss on how to respond?

Well, then, I give you my Golden Prayer: Lord Jesus, how do You desire … (desire is a Love word: use it) … how do You desire to enter this situation, touch these people, through me?

I am NOT saying: Lord Jesus, what do You want me to do? Do not pray that prayer! I assure you, it goes clunk on the floor of heaven.

Use the words I have given you. It will change you. Trust me.

Here’s the fourth discipline of readiness: Do something. Do something. Give God something to work with.

Don’t wait … and wait …. for God to make the first move. God is waiting for you to do something. Waiting for me to do something. Waiting for us to make an honest move.

Do what’s on your heart. The courageous thing, the generous and just thing. Trust the stirring of the Holy Spirit. Don’t worry about knowing in advance or getting it right. Be willing to be guided in the moment by the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus promised.

God does not step on your line! God respects your space to act, with imagination and physical as well as divine grace, in your unique labors to build the Land of the Rightside Up.

What to do? Where to start?

Which leads me to the fifth discipline of readiness: Day by day, choose to move deeper into your complete transformation in Christ, where you can say with the Apostle Paul: I live now, no longer I but Christ lives in me  (Galatians 2:20).

If you prefer to hold back for now from complete transformation in the risen Christ, then these other disciplines will ring hollow. They will lack vitality—the vitality which is the Holy Spirit at work in you.

Complete transformation in Christ swings open the gate to resurrection. I believe this with all my heart. This is what we mean by “a life of faith.”

You and I follow the One who carried Love to the edge, to the rim of the abyss, where things fall apart and disappear.

He carried Love all the way to the Cross, to the tomb.

Jesus believed with all his heart that Love would keep his soul from death, and hold him strong enough to keep his feet from stumbling along the way.

He believed this. 

He underwent death. And through his loving submission, God showed the world that Life, not death, has the final word.

Give it a try. Test the waters. Be surprised. 

Let Love lead the way.

Learn more about prayer in my little and very readable book on prayer, Lord, Teach Us to Pray. When you order anything in my Store, you support my work directly—which means a lot to me!