Song of Solomon 7

Get Up Early

Let us get up early. Song of Solomon 7:12.

“Let us get up early.”

“No, thank you!” say you. “I'd much rather sleep late.”

“Quite right!” say I. I thoroughly agree with you. Alarm clocks, and people who wake you by shaking you or dabbing a cold sponge in your face I'd have them all abolished. I'd let everybody sleep late you included and yet, I'd have everybody “get up early.”

Perhaps you think I'm trying to be funny. I'm not I'm perfectly serious, and I really mean it. “Then how,” say you, “are we to sleep as late as we like and yet get up early? It is impossible.” No, excuse me, it is not. It is quite possible. It is possible in two ways.

1. The first way is go to bed early enough to let your body and brain have all the sleep they need by morning. The younger you are and the faster you are growing the more sleep you need. Doctors will tell you that it is while you sleep that you grow most, and that if you don't get enough sleep you will be stunted both in mind and in body. You will not be properly developed. You will be like an ill-nourished plant, neither strong nor pleasant to look at.

Now, I know quite well that most of you would rather do anything than go to bed early. Just when you are ordered upstairs the fun downstairs seems to begin, and you think it very hard indeed when father or mother insists that you go off to bed at once, with a strong emphasis on the once. I should say at once with even greater emphasis if I were there, for every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after it. The fact is that the early hours of sleep are the hours of deep sleep, and the deeper the sleep the more good it does you. Towards morning your sleep becomes shallower and shallower, till at last you find yourselves awake. So you see how important it is to go to bed early. It is only if you go to bed early enough to give yourselves a sleep long enough and deep enough that you will waken in the morning ready and glad to get up.

2. That brings me to the second way of getting up early. Perhaps you will best understand this way of getting up early if you repeat the text like this “Let us get up early.”

There are plenty of people moving about on their feet all day who have not got up. They never get up properly. They are only half-awake, and they are using only half of their brain-power. We all know people like that. They slouch through life in a half-hearted fashion. They never do anything worth doing, except by chance. When they leave this world they have put into their life only half the work, yes, and half the play and half the happiness they should have put into it.

When you get up, boys and girls, I want you to really get up. I want you to be wide awake, and bright and sharp as needles. And I shall give you three reasons why you should really get up when you get up.

(1) The first is that he who gets up is always there. He is always on the right spot at the right moment. He does not arrive late for his appointments, he does not catch the car after the one he sets out to get. He does not spend the day chasing lost minutes and trying desperately to catch up with his work. He does what he has to do at the time it should be done.

(2) The second reason is that he who gets up is all there. His brain is keen and active. He is in dead earnest. What he does he does with all his might. He puts his whole heart and soul into his work, and he does it as well as he knows how.

(3) The third reason is that he who gets up, gets there. He meets with the success he deserves. He succeeds because he doesn't wait till opportunity comes and knocks at his door, he goes and wakes up opportunity. Perhaps you have heard people speaking rather enviously of some successful business man. “Oh! he's always had luck!” they said. Well, if these people knew the secret of that man's success I believe they would find it was just this he “stuck in” and deserved the good fortune. For luck usually means just hard work and “sticking in.” And it is the only luck worth having.

In this second kind of getting up early, we have said a good deal about the “getting up” and nothing about the “early.” But here it is at the end. Early need not always mean 6 or 7 a.m. It may mean early in life. And that is why this text is specially for you, boys and girls. You are in the morning of your life, and the “early” is your most precious possession. It is the possession we older folk envy you. Practice this second way of getting up early while you are young. So will you make the very best of the years God gives you. So will you be always there, and all there, and so, with God's help, will you get there.