To know me well is to know that I am not a morning person. I want to be because of the early bird and the worm and such, but my mind and soul come alive after the hour of 10 am even if my body is up earlier. Six am feels early to me and anything before 5 am feels unthinkable. At this point, all the morning people in my life start telling me about the stillness of the morning and the rising sun and how productive they feel before the rest of the world is awake. I hear them, but my body does not seem to get the point. I have stillness in my bed. My sleep is very productive in its own kind of way.

I give this as context because, as I was studying the last few days of Jesus’s life, the phrase the Lord used to draw me toward him in wonder was “in the morning.” Of all the things in the living and active word of God, it was the Greek word proi, which means “early in the morning; at dawn.” God certainly has a sense of humor!

Two Very Different Morning Motivations

In Mark 15, we hear that the chief priests, “as soon as it was morning,” held a counsel after which they “bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate” (Mark 15:1). In the Greek, the words are much stronger: “Euthus proi” begins the verse. Euthus means straight away; immediately; without any unnecessary zig zags or delay.”

As much as it may seem like mincing words, the strength of these words shows the organizing passion of their lives. Straightaway, as soon as they could, before dawn, without delay, the priests had to meet to get rid of Jesus. What made them rise early was their need to stop the one who was threatening their power, position, and tradition.

We hear proi again with a different additional descriptor a chapter later, in Mark 16. The Marys and Salome “brought spices, so that they might go and anoint him” (Mark 16:1). “And very early on the first day of the week, when the had risen, they went to the tomb” (Mark 16:2).

This time, we see in the Greek lian proi: very early, exceedingly early, utterly early. The emphatic lian adds intensity of intention to the women rising early in the morning. While the chief priests rose early and with straightaway intensity to destroy the body of Jesus, the doting women rose exceedingly early to show their devotion to the torn body of Jesus. Of course, the Spirit was quick to prod me with the questions, “What makes you rise early in the morning?” and ” What are the ordering passions of your life?”

The One who Rose Early for the Father

These are not the first occurrences of the phrase “early in the morning” in Mark’s gospel. Way back in the first chapter of his gospel, Mark writes the following of Jesus:

“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35).

In the Greek, we have lian proi (like we saw with the ladies heading to the tomb), but we also have the added ennuchos, meaning “while it was still night.”

Again, it may seem like splitting hairs, but words create worlds. Underneath that rising-early-before-the-dark-Jesus, we sense the passion, the urgency, the priority of being with the Father.

Long before Jesus rose from the tomb, he was raising early to be with the Father. Love for the Father, hunger for his nearness, and readiness to obey him were the organizing passions of Jesus’s life. What got him out of bed every morning was the existing, eternal smile of the Father and his desire to live ever-pleasing the Father while walking the earth.

Jesus never wavered in his morning motivation. I do. Jesus never missed a moment of being with the Father. I do. Yet, he rose from the dead that I might be empowered by the indwelling Spirit to rise with the desire to please the One already fully at pleasure with me through Christ. No matter how early I rise, there is one already waiting for me.

I was reminded of one of my favorite George Herbert’s poems, “Easter (II).”

“I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sun arising in the East,
Through he give light, and th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavor?
We count three hundred , but we miss:
there is but one, and that one ever.”

Herbert recognized that no matter how early arose on Easter morning to greet Jesus, Jesus was already risen and ready to greet him. The same is true of us daily.