Sweet dreams?
"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light." (Romans 13:12)
From the moment you open your eyes a landslide of input greets you. I'm sure you'll slowly phase in from the dreams you had just before waking. If you're working, that's probably the next thing in view. If it's your day off and you're up early, chances are there are things you've got to do, they'll come in to focus next. Hopefully you don't have a hangover. Maybe the dreams you had were a little too vivid to dismiss and as you make your way to the bathroom, you remember instances and emotions. Those two things, by the way, make up the larger part of the vantage point from which you both view your own mind and also dreams, in particular.
I'm not telling you how to think or how you think. This is my life—except for the hangover part. I just threw that in there. All that aside, as your (and my) day continues, chances are, the few thoughts that made up this cascade of mental minutae coupled with your innate (read: developed) personality, will color the rest of your day (and mine).
"This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm 118:25)
Thank God for that. A new day is so much more than the rotation of the earth back to the sun. A new day brings fresh opportunities, new challenges, vistas, direction. Also this: "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." (Lamentations 3:22-23, emphases mine). And thank God for that too. Because it's true whether we stop and actually realize it or not. Whether we actually make it real for us. Many days are run-on, simply a continuation of the one prior. The same mental anguish and depression and struggle. This is normal, or so we think. A friend of mind answers "another day" whenever I see him and ask him how he is. He's not miserable, mind you. More of a pragmatist. But you get the idea.
"And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness;" (Isaiah 35:8a)
A new day could be the day everything changes for you. And why not? Whatever road you need to be on for your life (assuming you're not already there) can begin with a simple step in that direction. And if you lack direction, God says He'll provide it. "In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths." (Proverbs 3:6) Before we go any further, I would just like to say that each of us, as we launch out on our brand-new day should prayerfully consider something akin to a rally cry to the spiritual life. Be it a simple prayer, a scripture that excites you or an acknowledgment, in love, of God's "closer than your very breath" presence. Because when we begin the day with a touchstone such as these, the rest of the day can flow smoothly. It works, trust me.
As your day progresses, try and step back and consider your emotional state in light of how God is all the time. He's always happy even when I'm not. I think much of the time that we spend miserable, we think also that God is in the same emotional state as we. And this may or may not be true, because a depressed mindset might not contain the thought to dispassionately acknowledge Him unless it has been worked into our personality. Even then we forget. Point is, there is joy for us set aside for the asking.
Real quick: do you ever go about your day and get reminded, from something usually very small and precise, of a dream you had the previous night? It happens on occasion for me and it's always quite startling. Oh yeah, I had a dream about that last night. Weird. What does it mean? God knows.
Maybe about now, the day is fully established. The sun is overhead and you've forgotten all about what you pledged in the morning. Don't worry, God has it all written down and in order to stem the lightning-speed flow of our days, one after another the same, we must be in tune with God's overarching drumbeat. The "music of the spheres" might be a myth, but God has a pitch and tone and register that we can align ourselves with no matter how discordant everything seems. Think back to the insulated feeling you had when you woke up. The sunrise. The taste of your breakfast. Any small thing—the smell of the air as you walked outside—that was separate, and pleasantly different from the avalanche that sought to inundate you upon opening the present of your new day from God. The fact of the matter is, if you find yourself overwhelmed by input, it doesn't do any good to with or hope or pray it gone. I firmly believe that it's our strength that must rise to the occasion so that we will be climbing (or moving, whatever) those mountains rather than turning to the right or the left in order to merely go around.
Everyone I know says the same thing. That time is speeding up. The days seem to go by at an alarming rate. Whether this is some physical/chronological anomaly or a figment experienced alike by the masses, the way to make time stand still is to actively invite God in to our daily allowance. Every moment we do this is akin to a little pinprick of light that glows amidst the darkness of our retrospection. The moments spent in God's presence are the ones that stand out. The ones that are preserved for posterity.
The day spent, the night at hand, you pull back the covers to climb in bed. I heard once of offering the beautiful moments of our day back to good like a bouquet of flowers. Like counting your blessings instead of sheep, the fragrance and beauty will infuse your dreams and color the coming day.
Sweet dreams.