Night Nudges by Alan Anderson

 

 

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

 (Psalm 24:8)

 

What is a Night Nudge?

Right about now, you might wonder or even scratch your head and ask, what is a night nudge? Let me say first, you asked a deep and thought-provoking question. Second, I am most pleased to answer your question.

 Here goes.

You slip into your lovely, comfy bed and drift off to sleep. Evening moves on like a quiet, slow river with the sound of silence serenading you. A perfect, gentle end to a day overwhelmed by tasks.

 

Suddenly you wake up. “What?” “Huh?” The mist of sleep makes way to a storm of jumbled thoughts in your mind. Once the thoughts settle down, one remains. This thought is golden. Before one more second goes by, you dive at your light switch to enable you to see as you grab your notebook. You learned long ago of the value of keeping a notebook by your bedside. With great haste, you write this golden thought in your notebook before it flees from your now awake brain.

 

A night nudge is like a gentle push to encourage a writer not to lose or neglect an opportunity to put meaningful words into the world. From my perspective, I find a night nudge more of a friend, therefore not one to run from or ignore. I do, however, write it down without haste.

 

More about night nudges

 

Night nudges can feed our sense of wonder as writers. We can wonder what sets this night nudge apart from others. Is this how God develops one’s creativity even while we sleep? If so, then the ability to write is truly a gift. This is all part of the fun and awe of night nudges.

 

There are times a night nudge might wake us with a gentle touch and lays someone on our hearts. Perhaps, for whatever reason, God’s still small voice is nudging us. This is a nudge never to ignore. One where in the quiet bliss of the night we can pray for someone loved and cared for.

 

Dear writers, let us never take the silence and solitude of the night for granted. God may stir our creative gift to bring forth words too precious to miss. Rest indeed but be open to the gentle inspiration of a night nudge.

 

 

Alan lives in Deroche, B.C. with his wife, Terry, and their poodle, Charlie. Alan’s byline is “Touched by grief and held by hope.” He has been working on a work of love for three years called, “Hidden Poetic Voices: A Reflective Work of Grief, Faith, and Poetry.” This is a work of poetry and prose highlighting the grief of grandparents. Alan periodically writes articles for FellowScript Magazine and the online magazine for Compassionate Friends. He has written posts for our InScribe blog since 2015. His website, https://scarredjoy.ca, is under construction.