Your First Nine Minutes
We all have our default “first thing” morning routine once the alarm clock awakens us. For some, it is press the snooze button, hoping to catch nine more minutes of shut eye. Or you might turn on the television to watch the morning news or catch last night’s sports scores on ESPN. Maybe you crawl out of bed and make your way to the coffee maker, desperately in need of that that first jolt of caffeine. You drag yourself to the shower hoping that the warm water loosens the stiffness in your back and neck from another restless night sleep.
Have you ever wondered why the snooze feature gives you only nine minutes? Why not an even 10? When the snooze feature was added in the 1950s, the inner workings of alarm clocks had long become standardized. This meant that the teeth on the new snooze gear had to mesh with the existing gear configuration. Yes, for those of you too young to remember, at one time, clocks were not digital, they really did run by mechanical gears
Originally, the clock makers wanted the snooze time to be ten minutes, but they could not get the snooze gears to align perfectly with the clock’s gears, thus they would need to make the snooze time either slightly longer or shorter than ten minutes. It was feared that giving someone more than ten minutes to “snooze” would allow them to fall back into a deep sleep, thus, nine minutes became the standard. Of course, today, with digital technology, any length of snooze time could be built into clocks. But most manufacturers still use the nine-minute snooze as standard. Even my iPhone’s alarm clock snoozes for nine minutes,
Mornings are an important time of day. Before facing the day we should have a “first thing” routine of looking into the face of God. We should begin each day seeking God and His strength; the strength we will need to do whatever it is we will be doing that day. We should not begin the work of the day until we have had a few quiet moments with God.
David, in Psalm 5, gives us this model for beginning our day – “In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly” (v.3).
Jesus knew even He needed to put first things first each morning. We read this in Mark 1:35 – “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
So, why not have a morning routine that begins, instead of snoozing for nine more minutes, with an appointment with God! By doing so, you can have a day influenced by His character and under His control! You can walk through your day doing all things through Him who gives you strength. (Philippians 4:13)
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