- It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep (Psalm 127:2).
This passage attacks me on a couple of fronts:
First, I work at a pharmacy. I count pills for a living – Ambien, Lunesta, and Temazepam are in my counting tray virtually every day. I also work a cash register where I get the see the faces that go along with those prescriptions. This forces me to take a passage like this and apply it to reality – it speaks to real people that I interact with every day.
Second, I have battled with sleep issues (I won’t call it Insomnia) for a number of years. I always liked to stay up late. But the issues really began when I took a night job almost 10 years ago, right after marrying my wife. Sometimes I think I’ve never fully recovered from working those hours. Night time is, and has been for years, my most productive time – at least from a mental standpoint.
This has worked out fine for me for the most part. I have a job that accommodates itself to such sleeping habits. My need, and desire, to study also lines up with these habits – it’s easier to read, study, and write when the kids are in bed. It beats going to the library in the morning, or locking myself in a room.
There was a time when I went through a cycle that I would call ‘catching up.’ I would sleep four or five hours a night for a few weeks and then have a one-day crash in which I would sleep 12 to 15 hours. But as I’ve gotten older, this has become a rarity. Now I just live on a deficit most of the time. Many of us do.
I’ve contemplated taking sleeping pills, but Psalm 127 always comes to mind – God gives to his beloved sleep. GOD gives sleep. Sleep is his gift. Perhaps he gives said sleep through secondary means – say, sleeping pills. But I think the issue goes much deeper than that. The issue with sleep, at least for me personally, is often idolatry. I refuse to sleep because of my incessant need to do more. I need to study more, read more. There’s so much I don’t know, so much I should be learning. I need to read the Bible more, I need to work on sermons. I need more time for leisure (I sure didn’t have any time for that during the day, I’ve got to have it some time, right?).
Does this attitude not presuppose my own desire to be omniscient? My own wish to fulfill my own desires? My own desire to be Lord? Sleep is the gift of God’s grace, for it reminds us that we are not God. It reminds us that we are limited – that we’re not omniscient or omnipotent.
Every day we walk the razor sharp edge between being a sluggard (which is one form of sin) and a purposeful insomniac (which, I believe, is another). It makes sense then to see sleep as a gift of grace. For in its proper role sleep is not laziness nor is it something to avoid. It is rest, like a daily sabbath ordained by God. It points us to our need to work hard while we are awake, while reminding us that we can’t work all the time (because, again, we’re not God).
Jesus offers us rest. I take his invitation to mean that he invites us into a position where we realize that all that needs to be accomplished for our salvation, for eternal life, for the well-being of our souls, has been accomplished in Him. His rest is a rest from trying to earn your own way into God’s love and acceptance. But refusal to sleep contradicts this. For it exposes a soul that cannot be satisfied with Christ’s accomplishment and God’s purposes. God looks at me, in Christ, and says, ‘you are accepted, all has been accomplished.’ But I can’t look at the past day as if that were true. If I could, I would sleep much easier.
It is God who does not sleep. I often quote the psalter paraphrase of Psalm 121:
I to the hills will lift mine eyes, from whence shall come my aid?
My safety cometh from the Lord, whom heav’n and earth have made.Thy foot he’ll not led slide, nor will he slumber that thee keeps.
The Lord that keepeth Israel, he slumbers not nor sleeps.
God doesn’t sleep, and I am not God. I can sleep because God doesn’t.
I repeat these words to myself almost every day. I pray Psalm 121 over my family in our bed time prayers almost every night. Yet it’s still a battle. Faith is very broad and very focused. It is focused because Christ is its sole object. Yet it is broad because it applies to everything. Sometimes is even takes faith just to sleep. And now I’m off to bed.
