Lovely!  My heart, coming fully awake, stopped…and then began to beat wildly.  The music, the heavenly music!  And for just a few glorious moments, I thought that I was hearing the Trumpet.

My sweet baby, called me out of a deep sleep, right before the clock struck midnight…barking and sobbing in the dreaded language of croup.  My husband and I dashed downstairs for the back door, Izzy cradled in our arms.  The chilly night air, full of raindrops hit our anxious faces, and our little son gasped a welcome breathe.  We sat there in the drizzle, our blankets slowly dampening watching the rise and fall of Israel’s chest.

By the time his breathe was no longer labored, we were thoroughly chilled and ready to try and rest again.  Propping the window open, we gently laid our sleeping child by the draft, covered him with dry blankets, and crawled back in our welcoming beds.  But rest that night was not meant to be…and my husband was soon running back down the stairs with Izzy in tow…allowing me a bit of rest before the next watch.  I must have fallen asleep quite deeply, for when something awoke me, I came out of the fog with racing heart.  What had I heard?  Right before the realization that I had a very sick child, and it was my turn for caretaking, something precious happened.  Wafting in into our room from the open window, curling softly around the corners of the darkened edges, reaching  into my slumbering mind,  nudging my ears awake, came a soft and melodious strand of harmony…a beautiful wisp of soothing music…cresting and falling…the chords feathering out then finding each other again.  For ten or fifteen glorious seconds my whole soul thrilled in response to what I thought it surely must be!  The digital alarm clock read ten minutes after four in the morning.  My eyes strained for the window waiting for brilliant Light to rend the corners of the heavens and shatter the last of the shadows the children of God would ever have to experience in this wilderness, again.  I thought it was the perfectly orchestrated prelude for the sound my ears were created to hear… the Trumpet of my Beloved One.

It seems rather surreal to reflect on, for here I am.  And there, you are dear sister and brother in Christ.  No, it wasn’t the hour. But please hear the hope I bring to you…for one moment my whole being strained forward while completely relaxing.  I thought it was over.  The waiting…sometimes in pleasure, many times in pain…it was over.

I wonder what it was.  I think it may have been the hum and singing of wheels on the wet highway far way…spinning and drifting into a melody…accompanied by the falling rain… dropping away the harshness…before drifting into my bedroom.  It is not often I have my window open in the rain…

Or, perhaps, it was the breath of God my Father: brushing my cheek, waking the ears of my heart, so that for a few sweet and priceless moments, I might hear the lullaby He sings over us each night as He gives His beloved sleep.

Or, most likely, He was just dazzling my imagination and my expectation…waking my remembrance of why I am here, what I am doing, and Who it is that I am waiting for.  Most likely, He was giving me Hope.

And I took it, and soared.

And found grace in sickness and fatigue.

Not even the Son of Man knows the day or the hour.  I wonder how this can be…picturing Him putting one foot in the stirrup of His white horse as He hears the mangled cry of an abused child, then taking it out as He gazes on the cursing, stumbling unredeemed sinner.  But Jesus knows what He knows and it’s this:  that His Father is good.  That He is not willing for anyone to perish.  And that, when He says “NOW!” it will be the right time.  And we, Jesus ’adopted brothers and sisters and joint-heirs, we believe our Father also.  And we wait.