Waking Up in Freedom
The quiet stillness of early morning, that time between 2 and 4 AM, is my favorite time of day. It’s the time that me and God meet. Sometimes, the Holy Spirit whispers a comforting reminder to join Him. Sometimes, He shakes me, jolting me awake, summoning me before Him. But each morning, no matter what, He and I have an appointment.
When I was a little girl, I used to tiptoe down the stairs when I heard my dad setting up the ironing board. I would sit down at the kitchen table to hear him spin yarns about his adventures (both real and imaginary) as a police officer as he pressed my Peter Pan collared uniform shirts into stiff perfection. He would listen to me, too, and preface his heavy-handed suggestions with his customary, “You can do what you want to do, but if I were you…” As I got older, he taught me how to sort and hang laundry and balance a checkbook along with other practical yet important life skills during those early morning meetings. But he never stopped talking to me or listening to me or guiding me.
I guess that’s why hearing God call for me each morning is so clear. He gave me an earthly father who prepared me for my time with Him all these years later. When I rise from the bed and head to my spot on the couch, I know that He is going to bring more clarity to whatever circumstance I am facing. At this time of morning, the duties of wife, mother, and employee don’t matter, and they have to wait. I am simply and beautifully a daughter alone with her doting Father. I can cozy up to Him. I can laugh with Him. I can vent to Him. I can be corrected by Him. I can cry to Him. I can learn from Him. Regardless of the anxieties from the day before or the worries about the day ahead, my appointment with God has a way of putting it all into proper perspective.
In our time together this morning, I remembered that today is Independence Day, a day fraught with paradox for the African American and female in these United States of America, and I wondered what my Father had to say about “freedom.” I, too, am a recipient of the harshnesses and oppressions of our society. I, too, experience the cruelties and disregard my physicality invites in a purportedly free and equal nation. But He reminded me that my liberation is not worldly circumstance dependent. It does not rise or fall on popular opinion or political winds of change or laws erected or dismantled.
My freedom was bought for the heaviest of prices at the cross on Calvary. My freedom comes from belief in His Son and a commitment to do life more and more like Him each day. And it is early in the morning, when I am alone with Him, when His greatness and magnificence and love reminds me of the impermanence of every situation and hardship and hatred, that I recall that every day is Independence Day for the child of God. Every day we are victoriously set free because every day we serve a risen Savior!
As a child, I learned that joining my dad in the early morning meant that I had unfettered access to his love and wisdom. As an adult, I know that the most important thing I do each day is keep my appointment with God. That early morning rendezvous keeps me dialed in to God’s agenda and perspective. It allows me to hear Him without the noise of the world infiltrating my consciousness. It reminds me that no matter what anyone else has to say to or about me, Jesus decided to die in my place, setting me and every other believer free. There is no freedom like freedom in Christ Jesus!
“And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” (Mark 1:35, KJV)
Memos from the Middle 
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I too can relate to this. Though I didn’t know it as a child the still clear voice in the quiet of the night has calmed, led, and comforted me also all my life long.