When do you start your day? Most people will immediately go to whatever time they normally get up or set their alarm. Others, either legalists or masters in the art of sarcasm, might say midnight. However, I want you to consider a more ancient tradition and consider the implications. What if your day started at sundown? A few years ago, I was in Jerusalem with my family, it happened to be the Sabbath, and yet my kids still wanted to eat. We looked around, and many of the restaurants were still open, so we got cleaned up and headed out. It was just before dark when they call closed, I mean every one of them. Not just the restaurants, everything was closed. Why? Why start the new day at sundown?
In Genesis 1, the scriptures tell the story of creation. I am sure most of you have heard it before, but did you pay attention. For each day, the activity of God is described, and there is a common refrain.
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. (Gen 1:2-5)t
You hear it over and over, and there was evening and morning. The new day seems to begin in the evening, and that got me to thinking and observing my own life.
When I thought about the evening as the completion of the day, I was not as intentional about the decisions I made about what I watched, read or when I went to sleep. However, then I began to notice that when I chose to go to bed, how much news I decided to read, or even what I ate made more of an impact on the following morning and day than it did on the evening itself. I made a mental shift and began to think of anything after sunset as the next day (or at least as solid preparation for it). I knew that if I didn’t go to bed on time, tomorrow would be negatively impacted. In addition, I would add a time of prayer and reflection to not only to show gratitude for the day but to begin to look and plan for the next morning.
I guess it shouldn’t surprise us that ancient biblical wisdom can be found in even the most familiar passages. What would it look like in your life if you began to see each evening and how you invest your time as a down payment on tomorrow?