While sitting in the living room rocking chair, I can watch the growing light on the horizon. Even now, there’s the barest hint of pink as the sun rises to welcome our part of the world into a new day.

I’ve woken up early enough the last few days to take time to enjoy the quiet of the early morning dark, the only illumination coming from our Christmas lights on the tree and around the room. I sit here and enjoy my morning devotions and look forward to the gradual increase of colour in the sky. I love it. I love the quiet. I love the stillness. I love the solitude. It’s an introvert’s dream.

Sunrise also happens on time each day. I can’t control it. I can’t rush it. Nor can I slow it down. It simply arrives. I can set my watch by it. And there’s something beautiful about how God made the world—patient, unrushed, inviting me to be likewise. Inviting me to enter the new day without anxiety and a scattered attention.

Because I can often find myself heading immediately into the direction of busyness, if not in body than in mind. The priorities of the coming day press against my longing to allow myself the gift of slowness.

So this morning, as I notice the trees in my yard silhouetted against the now light orange shade of the sky, all this reminds me that if the world is not in a rush—if creation itself has rhythm and timing—then neither is God. He is patient, never worried or anxious, never in danger of panic.

Because this is true, I can also be unhurried. Because I can trust that God—who is also patient—has the world and my life well in hand.

Enjoying the slow waking up of the world helps me learn to enter God’s rest. Knowing that his mercies—and indeed his grace, his love, his patience, his kindness, his compassion—are new every morning helps me to enter his rest. Every sunrise we experience is a sign that God is yet with us and has more in mind for us.

And I can’t think of a better way to enter a new day than being reminded of this.