Begin Again: A 7-Day Devotional By Leeana TankersleySample

Black Coffee and Listening

I’ve started getting up at 5 a.m. Not every day, but more days than not. This is an anomaly for me. Normally, I am addicted to sleep. But this pre-twilight pocket, between night and morning, seems like it has something for me.

I sit and drink black coffee and listen and write. Undistracted. I write on the top of my paper:

God, what do you want to say to me this morning?

And I just listen, keeping track of a dialogue that sometimes arrives quickly and completely and sometimes arrives fragmented and unresolved. I have been asking God this question for a while now, but never in the dark, never early in the morning like this. I’m beginning to believe, though, that there are treasures hidden

in the darkness. And when you are beginning a journey of opening up, you need these hidden treasures along the way.

I chose the word listen for my word this year. The root means “to honor.” I love that.

Listening is about trading our trying for trust. This is how we find true rest, I believe. Listening is a begin-again kind of ritual. It’s never finished and it’s always possible, and it’s waiting to give us living and breathing gifts that are new every morning. We start where we are, not where we want to be, which requires a new level of honesty with ourselves.

But if I can sit in the truth that I am held by Love no matter what, I can and will begin again. God invites me to “seal in” this work, my listening, my trust, my held-ness. He says, Breathe and begin again. Keep coming to the table and I will keep showing you the way.

Set aside some time today for your own pre-twilight moment. Breathe, listen, and write down what you hear.