I was speaking at a conference recently and the organizers of the event had me stay in a nearby hotel. To ensure that I would not miss the morning session, I called the front desk and asked for a wake up call. There are few things I loathe more than being startled early in the morning by the sound of an alarm or a phone ringing. But the wake up call did what it was intended to do. It woke me up.

Some people receive a different kind of wake up call in life. They are startled by the loss of a job or a bad medical report or divorce papers or the loss of a loved one. And like those first few minutes in the morning when you wake up and everything is still a little foggy and you’re trying to make sense of your surroundings and you’re trying to get your bearings, many people spend months and sometimes years in a fog like that. The wake up call sends their world into a tail spin where they find themselves wanting to go back to sleep, wanting to hibernate from the reality around them.

But for a select few, their wake up call brings clarity. It’s like they’re waking out of a deep slumber of the soul and for the first time in their lives, their eyes are open and their hearts are awakened to life and the beauty of it.

I pray for our city daily. I pray that people wake up to the life they could be living instead of the one they’re sleeping through.

Tom Shadyac is a well-known movie director who nearly died after a bad bicycle wreck. It was his wake up call. And the result of his eyes being opened is a new film called I AM. I’ve attached the trailer in hopes that it stirs something in you. Especially if you are sleeping through this life.