trust the sunrise...

Since I get up so early these days, I get to see lots of sunrises. most days I am too grouchy to appreciate them, still mad that some morning person got to decide that the world would run on their schedule.  But sometimes they are a sweet reminder.  The Bible talks a lot about the sunrise, the dawn, and morning.

    “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
    Thus says the LORD,
    who gives the sun for light by day
        and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night,
    who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—
        the LORD of hosts is his name:
    “If this fixed order departs
        from before me, declares the LORD,
    then shall the offspring of Israel cease
        from being a nation before me forever.”
(Jeremiah 31:31-36)

Through Jeremiah, the Lord is telling the nation of Israel about the new covenant. He is promising to restore them, because at the time this was written, they are a broken and exiled nation.  He tells them that as long as the sun is coming up and the oceans are roaring, He is still on the throne. The fact that the sun rises every day is a reminder of this covenant.

The promise is the same for you and me too. All of the restoration of the new covenant has not come yet.  Part of it yes. Jesus has come, but there is more to come.  As long as that sun rises, it is a reminder that God is still keeping his end of the covenant. I am His.  He is still in control. He is still on his throne.  He is still working things out for the good.  He is still restoring what is broken.  He is still holding me up and holding me close, even if I cannot feel it.  No wonder my soul is in awe at the sunrise.  It's beauty is not just in its colors, but in its reminder.  I can trust the sunrise.  You see because as surely as the coming of the dawn each morning (Hosea 6:3), my Lord is returning.  He is working. He is faithful, just as the sun is faithful to rise.  And these days, I need any reminder I can get.