I imagine that sometime around 7AM lots of folks heard the alarm and started shouting bad words (or throwing things) at the alarm. A few probably even had a little bit of trouble getting out of bed, sadly wondering how their vacation had flown by so quickly.
Maybe a handful of others spent a good long time wide awake in the shadows before the alarm went off, thinking about the stressful things in their lives ... like that situation coming up at work, or the fretful condition of their marriage (or relationship; or the lack of marriage or meaningful romantic relationship), or their credit card debt or about the dim prospects for improvement in any those areas.
Could be one or two were wide awake all night, thinking about that thing that happened a long time ago that no one else knows about.
I'm sure more than a handful simply couldn't feel any good reason to get out of bed and face the day, even though they did it anyway. Like robots, simply responding to instructions.
You might have been one of them.
Or, you might have been one of the gung-ho Yee-ha, I Can't Wait To Be Anywhere So I Can Get Busy Asserting Myself So You'll Know I'm Here and I'm In Charge Type A Personality types willing to brutalize your new SUV's engine warranty on the way to work if it'll save three seconds of driving time (meanwhile pressure-testing your arteries waiting for the "stupid jerk with his head up his phone" ahead of you at the red light to pay attention, hang up from his conversation, notice the light's been green for 10 minutes and finally kick the gas pedal).
Or when you woke up this morning and looked at the clock, you might not have felt anything at all ... Is it really Tuesday? ... because you haven't felt anything change or been part of anything worth mentioning, because nothing has seemed worth remembering or looking forward to for a long, long time.
If that's you, maybe life feels like it's passing you by ... and this morning you felt a tug to make a change, but then doing something seemed like too much work, so before climbing out of bed and facing another day you did the usual thing and pushed that thought aside.
Regardless, whether at 9AM this morning you found yourself worrying about your finances, or complaining to yourself about your job, or felt hostile about your marriage or bitter about a relationship, or resentful of lost opportunities, felt disrespected, ignored or unloved, or woke up blaming someone else for all the problems in your life ... then Please remember this:
At 9AM on a morning almost two thousand years ago, Jesus found himself abandoned and denied by his closest friends, sleep deprived, accused, tried, found guilty, whipped, flailed and bleeding, seconds away from being nailed to a cross at the top of a hill called The Place of The Skull, crucified with nails through his hands and his feet between two outlaws, for sins he never committed.
For our sins, because he loved us that much.
So how's your day been going so far, truly?
Instead of cussing out the guy ahead of you at the red light, instead of screaming and calling your spouse ugly names in anger, instead of thinking about how to get revenge at work, instead of thinking about filling up the tank with gas and driving away from the bank and the credit card companies forever, think about pulling over soon as you're safely through the intersection ... and praying to thank God out loud that Christ's sacrifice means we'll never face the same kind of terrible, horrific 9AM morning Jesus suffered and endured on our behalf.
