Why (Someone Else) Was Up At 4:00 AM

(This post was written early in the morning on my 61st birthday by a Facebook friend, Rev. Derek Penwell. I wish I could be this cogent at anytime of the day 🙂)

It’s 4:00 in the morning. The house is quiet, but my thoughts aren’t.

I love this country, but I don’t always recognize it. Autocracy rarely kicks down the door while it’s gathering strength. It metastasizes out of sight until the body politic can’t breathe.

It files paperwork. It redraws districts until ballots become souvenirs. It purges voter rolls and calls the whole thing a “necessary corrective.” It stacks courts and calls it balance. It bans books it never bothered to read. It teaches us to fear our neighbors, then sells that fear back to us as patriotism.

Autocracy bows before nationalism and calls it faith. It waves a Bible like a flag, then forgets the parts about the poor, the stranger, and the peacemaker. It tells teachers to be quiet, librarians to be careful, and pastors to stick to the “spiritual” and avoid “politics”—unless it’s the approved brand. It rewards cruelty because cruelty works … at least for a while.

That’s why I’m awake. I can feel the pressure to grow cynical. And, take it from me, cynicism is easy at 4:00 a.m. But it’s also exactly what the powerful want. Exhausted people stop showing up. Hopeless people stop telling the truth.

So I try with what I’ve still got in the tank to rehearse a different script. Not a Hallmark version of hope, but a hope with scuffed knees. A hope that reads the footnotes, and knows about gerrymanders, gag orders, and threats dressed up as "remedies," but refuses to blink.

Here’s what that hope looks like in my head while the ceiling fan keeps turning.

Truth. Courage. Solidarity. Memory.

Truth refuses to let lies harden into common sense.

Courage keeps ordinary people standing when every instinct tells them to be quiet.

Solidarity looks the houseless in the eye, refuses to let the trans kid languish in silence, and walks with the one who’s walking alone.

Memory reminds us that repetition isn’t destiny, and that we’ve seen strongmen before. They pass. The people endure.

I’m trying to live like Jesus asked, so I say hope out loud. Not because I expect God to fix what we break, but because I believe God keeps calling us to different choices. We've got to get it into our heads that mercy is public, and justice is what love looks like in work boots and aprons. Peacemaking is the point, not an afterthought.

Blessed are the tired who keep showing up. Blessed are the brave who choose mercy in public. Blessed are those who strap on justice every day to go back out when the skies threaten.

If faith isn’t your thing, maybe call it civic muscle. Call it the habits of mutual aid that healthy communities practice until autocracy can’t breathe. Curiosity. Kindness. Shared facts. Real accountability.

What do we do at 4:00 a.m. with a heart full of dread?

We don’t surrender to our helplessness. We practice remembering that we belong to each other. We treasure the teacher who sees the kid always sitting alone. The nurse who keeps showing up for people who don’t even speak the same language. The organizer who knows every face searching for a little dignity. The congregation that opens its doors to let people in, rather than keeping them out.

We keep vigil. We keep each other awake, not to count disasters, but to guard possibilities. Not to catalog enemies, but to protect the vulnerable. Not to win every argument, but to keep a public where arguments can still happen without fear.

Now, it's almost 6 a.m. and morning is about to break.

But morning doesn't cancel the night. It answers it.

So here’s what I’m trying to manage while the coffee brews. I’m trying to name what’s happening. I refuse to pretend cruelty is inevitable. I

And in my best moments, I’m trying to choose the public, plodding, resilient hope that autocrats can neither conceive nor crush.

If you’re awake too, take heart. We will not sleepwalk into the future they're building. We’ll walk there together, eyes open, hands steady, practicing the kind of love that makes the bullies nervous and autocracy unthinkable.

May the day rise to meet us practicing mercy.