It is there before he is. That is the thing about five in the morning.
He does not wake up and then remember. The weight is already in the room, fully assembled, before his eyes are properly open, and it has been like that since the spring.
He is a practical man and he has tried practical things. Getting up. Not getting up. Reading something. Not reading anything. Going for a walk at five, which lasted eleven days and made no difference at all except that he was also tired.
And there is a verse on a card on the windowsill above the sink, which his wife put there in a good year, and it says the mercies of the Lord are new every morning.
He reads it every day. It is at eye level over the tap.
And every day at about five past five he stands at that sink and thinks the same sentence, and it is not rebellion and it is not even really doubt.
He thinks: where.
Because if it is new every morning then it should be findable in the morning, and this is the morning, and he has been standing in it since five, and the weight is here and he cannot locate anything that has been renewed.
Read the four verses before it
That card on your windowsill has three quarters of a sentence on it, and the page it came from is one of the darkest in the Bible, and nobody who put it on a card ever mentioned that.
Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness (Lamentations 3:19 to 23).
Look at what is on that page before the famous line.
Affliction and misery. Wormwood and gall. A soul that has them still in remembrance and is humbled by them, which means the man is not over it and is not pretending to be.
The mercy sentence is not spoken by a cheerful person on a good morning. It is spoken by a man in a ruined city, in the middle of a book that is entirely lament, immediately after he has said that the bitterness is still in his mind.
You are standing in exactly the place that sentence was first said from. That is the actual context of the verse on your windowsill, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a word spoken from a ruin into a word for a kitchen at five in the morning, because Scripture says all of it was written for our learning, that we might have hope.
What the mercy in that verse actually is
Now look at what he says the mercy consists of, because it is not what a card implies.
It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed.
Not consumed. That is the mercy he is naming. Not that the situation improved, not that the city was rebuilt, not that the weight lifted. That he is still here and has not been finished off.
So when the verse says they are new every morning, the thing that is new every morning is the not being consumed. It is a fresh supply of not-being-finished, delivered daily, to a man who is still in the ruin.
You have received a mercy this morning and it is the reason you are standing at the sink. The word names the mercy as not being consumed, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that visible to a man who has been looking for the wrong thing over the tap for months, because He is the one who takes the things of God and shows them to us.
Where
So here is the answer to your five past five sentence, and it is not a warm answer, it is a plain one.
Where.
Here. You are up. You are dressed. You have not gone under, and the weight was in the room before you opened your eyes and you got out of bed anyway and put the kettle on and read a card you no longer believe.
That is the mercy. It is not decorative, it does not feel like anything, and it is the exact thing Jeremiah named in a ruined city.
You are not consumed, and that is a delivery and not an accident. Scripture says His compassions fail not, and puts the not-failing in Him rather than in the strength of the person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies a man daily in a way he almost never notices at the time.
And I will be honest, because you are a practical man and you would hear it otherwise. Nothing here promises the weight lifts, and I do not know why it arrived in the spring or when it goes. What is settled is what the verse actually says and where it was said from, and that you are standing up at five in the morning, which is not nothing and is not your own doing.
So tomorrow at five you read four verses before the one on the card.
Start at the wormwood. Read the affliction and the misery out loud, because they are in the book and they are in your kitchen and reading them will be the first honest thing that has happened at that sink in months.
And then read on, in the same voice, without changing your tone for the good bit, until you get to: it is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed.
And then stop and look at yourself standing there, upright, at five in the morning, on the ninth month of it.
You have a mercy delivered this morning and it is the fact that you are still standing. The word names not being consumed as the mercy and calls it new every morning, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that plain to a man who has been looking over a tap for something that feels better than this.
Declare this over yourself
Now speak, standing at that sink. You are in Christ, and the mercy that keeps you from being consumed comes from Him and is not something you generate at five in the morning. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is the one who lands it. What God does about the weight and about when it lifts is His to decide, and He may answer in a way and at a time that is entirely His own. What He has said about mercies being new every morning was written from inside a ruin.
- Weight in the room before I open my eyes, you were here first and you are not the only thing here. Scripture says it is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, and not consumed is what I am, standing at this sink, this morning.
- Question I ask at five past five, you have an answer and the answer is plain. In the name of Jesus I take the mercy that is actually delivered, because the word says His compassions fail not, and the not failing is in Him and not in my strength.
- Father, Your mercies are new every morning and this morning I am upright and I am not consumed. I thank You that by Your Spirit that is a delivery and not an accident, and I read the four verses before the card today.
Lamentations 3:23
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