I live on the fringe of suburbia with all that comes with living there, including the white picket fence. Although farms and their open fields are only a stone’s throw away, it’s not very often that I hear a rooster. I heard one, however, the other morning. Its voice brashly cut the crisp, silent air. Honestly, it felt like everything, including me and the distant cars, shuffled off our sleep and wandered more alertly into the dawning day because the rooster crowed.
That experience nudged a little thought slowly into my mind: a rooster can’t help waking up and pronouncing to a drowsy world that the morning has come. Is it possible that God wired a rooster to proclaim the coming dawn and thereby to remind us that God’s mercies are new every morning?
It occurred to me on that cold morning that if even a dumb animal can rise early to alert the sleeping world that a new day has dawned and, with it, new mercies, then why can’t I? Why am I prone to stumble through my morning, bereft of the joy that comes with a new day? That tendency is worth exploring, it seems to me, if only to remind us of the fundamental need we have for mercies that are renewed each day.
Ironically, a rooster’s call haunted Peter his whole life. Each time he heard one, the sting of shame probably knocked on the door of his mind. It was, after all, the rooster’s cry that heralded his betrayal of Christ. And yet that the same rooster call also proclaims the deep, theological fact that God’s mercies are new every morning. Ironic, isn’t it?
Every morning, the rooster cries out to the world, “Wake up! Wake up! Yes, rise and shine and give God ALL the glory.”
What if we did the same?
Would our lives be different?
Would the world change?
Even a rooster reminds us that it’s time to tell a new story.
