I’m a morning person.  Please don’t hate me for that, but it’s true.

I have to say, it’s a little bit of a weird thing being someone who loves the morning in a world where it’s kind of cool to not love the morning.  Don’t get me wrong – I think the wide variety of jokes about fighting to wake up, and wanting to kill people, and ‘don’t talk to me until I’ve consumed coffee’ are hilarious.  I like them, I repost them, they make me laugh.  But truthfully, I look forward to the morning.  I like waking up.  And I love the hours I have in the morning before the rest of the world starts moving.

Here’s why:

1) The early morning is quiet

There’s no distractions early in the morning.  There’s no texts, no phone calls, no interruptions.  I’m writing this blog post at 5:03am, and right now all that I can hear is the sound of cicadas and crickets outside my office window.  No cars, no telephones, no chatter, no television.  It’s peaceful, and wonderful.  I sometimes hear people saying ‘my life is crazy… can’t I just get 5 minutes to myself?’.  Well, I’ve found the early morning is brilliant ‘me’ time.  It’s a time of solitude, reflection and contemplation – and I get to enjoy it nearly every day.

2) You get a chance to plan your day

There’s nothing like kicking off a new day and feeling like you’re ahead of the game from the word go.  I take time in the mornings to look across my diary for the day.  It gives me a chance to mentally prepare myself (and sometimes practically prepare too) for what’s coming in.  I can think and pray, and make notes ahead of important meetings I’ve got.  Sometimes I forget that I’ve made a certain commitment until I open up my calendar or task list for a day… but when you realise that early in the morning – all is not lost!  I find that the morning time helps me live a generally less-stressed life.

3) You get time in with God

Making sure you get time with God regularly is a struggle for pretty much everyone I know.  The intention is there for sure, but getting the time in an already packed day is difficult.  People think that because I’m a pastor that I’m lucky and get to spend all day with God.  I wish that were true.  The reality is that I have to fight through administration, meetings, planning, events, distractions and interruptions just like everyone else in order to get time with God into my day.  But the distraction-free haven called ‘early morning’ is the perfect place to meet with God.  Not only that, but getting to meet with Him before you start your day is beyond awesome.  The early time allows Him to speak into my day.  I regularly make changes to my day plan as a result of hanging out with God in the mornings.  He helps me prioritise, and keep the main thing the main thing.

I really think that the early morning is a gift that’s given to us every day from God.  Sometime I’ll write a post about how I became more of a morning person, because I haven’t always been an early riser.  But having personally discovered the power of this time, I’m hooked!