The Space Between Dawn and Dusk
The alarm doesn’t get a vote in our house. We are not up at 5:00 AM running marathons, and we are definitely not greeting the dawn with a manic grin.
Give us a slow mid-morning, a solid cup of coffee, and some quiet before the day starts throwing punches.
Zippy is usually curled up by the boots, waiting for the floorboards to creak. Christy is moving through her routine, keeping our world steady. It’s in those quiet, unpolished moments—before the inbox fills up and the noise takes over—that reality settles in.
The Mandate Isn’t Conditional
“From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the LORD’s name is to be praised.”
— Psalm 113:3
Read that again. It doesn’t say praise Him when the truck runs right, the bank account is flush, or the weather cooperates.
It marks two bookends: sunrise and sunset.
That covers every gritty, frustrating, mundane hour in between. The flat tires. The tough meetings. The quiet triumphs that nobody else sees.
Praise isn’t an emotion we wait to feel; it’s an anchor we drop when the water gets rough. It’s a deliberate choice to recognize who is actually running the show.
Living in the Middle
Most of life happens in the stretch between the rising and the setting. It’s easy to offer a nod to God when the sun breaks over the ridge, and it’s easy to breathe a sigh of relief when we crawl into bed at night.
The real test is 2:00 PM on a Tuesday.
- When things don’t go to plan.
- When patience runs thin.
- When we would rather complain than give thanks.
Praising His name all day doesn’t mean walking around with a fake smile. It means carrying an attitude of steady gratitude and quiet reverence through the grind.
Drink the coffee. Love your family. Do the work in front of you with honest hands, and keep your focus on the One who holds the sunrise and the sunset together.
Everything else is just background noise.