waking up is hard to do

Consider this: there’s not much point to Christianity without Christ, and there’s not much point to Christ without resurrection…Christianity, to put it baldly, is a religion of waking up.
Robert Rowland Smith,
Breakfast with Socrates

“Awake, O sleeper,

        and arise from the dead,

  and Christ will shine on you.”  Ephesians 5:14 ESV

Christianity is a religion of waking up.

I really hadn’t expected deep truths and insights from what I had figured would be a light and entertaining read, but Robert Rowland Smith’s Breakfast with Socrates has been a pleasant surprise. It is light and entertaining, but right there in the first chapter on “Waking Up” (literally just waking up in the morning – the premise of the book is to go through the ordinary activities of our ordinary day accompanied by the wisdom of Socrates and others) I found myself stumbling across some wonderful insights.

"Christianity is a religion of waking up."

Funny thing is that no sooner had I read those words than I picked up the book of Haggai and came across these words:

"Take a good, hard look at your life.
   Think it over.
You have spent a lot of money,
   but you haven't much to show for it.
You keep filling your plates,
   but you never get filled up.
You keep drinking and drinking and drinking,
   but you're always thirsty.
You put on layer after layer of clothes,
   but you can't get warm.
And the people who work for you,
   what are they getting out of it?
Not much—
   a leaky, rusted-out bucket, that's what.

That's why God-of-the-Angel-Armies said:

   "Take a good, hard look at your life.
   Think it over."   Haggai 1:5-7  Message

The prophet Haggai issues a prophetic wake-up call to a generation that has grown lethargic and discouraged. They started this great work of rebuilding the temple, but when opposition appeared (literally, right on the scene) they stopped, and then shifted gears to building everything but the temple they had begun. Fine houses for themselves, fields being farmed and worked, and with each passing day they glance less and less over at the stump that was the temple. The funny thing was, of course, that the harder they worked, the less progress and profit they seemed to make.

Is it just me or does this story have a familiar ring to it? And I was floored by the pointedness of Haggai’s soul-searching questions. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s the holidays.

Then I read on in Breakfast with Socrates and came upon this little gem (still on the subject of waking up):

The word for truth is aletheia,from which in English we get the word lethargy. But see how the Greek word is a-letheia rather than letheia; that is, truth is the opposite of lethargy. And what is the opposite of lethargy, if not waking up? The truth lies in being awake and throwing off the sheets. In a certain sense, you’re the most truly yourself when you awake. It’s hard to wake up inauthentically.

Wow.

What a connection. Truth and being awake -- truth the antithesis of lethargy.

And how we love sleep, turning in our beds like a door on its hinges.

Sleeping brain.

Slumbering heart.

Dreamy dozing – but you can just never remember any of the dreams.

And then comes a tapping. Is it a finger on a table? Water dripping in the sink? Or is it the prophet’s voice repeating over us, “Consider your ways.”

Waking up is hard to do at times – harder for some than for others.

But once awake in this God-alive world filled with its God-inspired colors, hearing the Voice, feeling the Breeze on your face, filling your soul as you are becoming most truly yourself – how utterly impossible to even consider going back to sleep.