Urgency

I woke up with one sock and a sense of unexplained urgency.  What is so important?  All I can do is pray.  There is something I should be doing; something I should be yearning toward.  I have no idea what this could be.  I pray for my friends, for my family, for my neighbors, for my lost sock.  I look outside, but there is nothing going on down there. 

The parking lot is still icy and the traffic is still halting and cautious in the street.  The cars puff their exhaust into the icy air above the filthy frozen street.  They are stuck behind the interminable red light at the tedious intersection.

What the hell is so important that I am jerked from sleep and cannot quiet my spirit?  Why won’t this knot in my stomach loosen?  What the hell am I so nervous about?

I breathe.  I am wide-awake.  My fingers type independently on the keyboard and I am only half paying attention.  What on earth?  Or perhaps not on earth…  I pray.

“Lord, what is this?  Please show me what to do.  What do you want of me?  Why am I awake?  Why do I feel so urgent?  What’s wrong?”  I feel like I’m about to cry because I don’t know what I should be doing.

This always happens to me.  I know I should be doing something but I can't figure out what it is.  Then I worry that I'm wasting time I could be using to fix the problem.  It doesn't make any sense to me.  The other side of the coin is a sense of apathy.  I feel that nothing I do will make any difference, no matter how hard I try.  I either feel like the most important being in the world, who must do something immediately, or I feel like the lowest most useless creature.

I have heard that the desire to do right is as good as doing that specific right thing.  So I pray that God can take this urgency and shape it into prayers He can use.  I don’t know what to pray for.   But the Holy Sprit is supposed to be able to translate our groaning.  I wish I knew more about that.