and there was evening...

Did you ever notice that in the Bible, the day starts in the evening? And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. The Jewish Sabbath begins in the evening. We, on the other hand, end our long hard day by retiring to sleep. We lay down at the end of an exhausting day, rather than at the beginning of a promising day.
Of course God does neither. He never slumbers or sleeps. What does God do then while we doze? He prepares our day for us.
Seems like from our perspective, sleeping at the end of the day, that God probably just cleans up our messes and fixes our mistakes from the previous day. That’s what I do. After the kids go to bed, I pick up after them, wash dishes, put things away. I get to work on the things I couldn’t get done in the hoopla of everyone moving about and doing. But that’s not what God does. He gets right to work on tomorrow for us (today for him). And there was evening and there was morning.
We sleep away the first half of everyday, and wake to join the day that God already has begun for us.
I think when one is up half the night he can’t help but think on these things. Lots of rabbits can be chased at 2:00am. When we are told not to let the sun go down on our anger, could it mean don’t begin the day with anger, rather than don’t let the day end with your anger still intact?
In the middle of the day, when all is underway, it is hard to hear God – even notice him. It amazes me that an all-powerful, everywhere God would be so subtle. He puts things into our paths and takes things out of our paths, he puts thoughts into our heads and takes thoughts out of our heads. Often, in the hurry of the day, we push aside the things in our paths, we bury the thoughts in our heads. The subtlety, the mystery of the all-powerful God is outshone by our own stuff in the middle of the day. I believe he wants it that way, otherwise, he’d do it big all the time. But at night, when God continues to work, he is more visible, subtlety is more obvious and whispers seem louder, thoughts linger and time slows down, hearts long and minds wander.

Over time, even the busiest person might notice the accumulation of little things that have made a difference in the day to day, but it is terribly exciting to see and feel the work as it is being done.