What sleep can teach you about discipleship.

Sleep is a very strange thing.  It is absolutely vital but it seems like a waste of time.  If you don’t get enough sleep you don’t do well.  From feeling wrung out and listless to serious health issues, not getting enough sleep is destructive for your physical and spiritual health.  In cases of extreme sleep depravation some of the first symptoms are decreased cognitive and emotional function; you become a little more stupid mentally and emotionally.  Someone can also experience micro-sleeps in which a person shuts down for about a minute. During this time they are completely out even if they have their eyes open and are standing up.  At highway speeds they will travel over a mile in a micro sleep while being blind. Additionally, they may experience delirium in which one becomes very disoriented.  In enhanced interrogation, sleep depravation reduces the will of the person being interrogated, especially regarding whom they wish to resist. Go long enough without sleep and you have the possibility of hallucination.  One newly minted doctor who was in residence and was working all day on call and all night in the ICU reported that the decorative pumpkin at the nurses’ station was talking to him.  In the most extreme cases sleep depravation can kill.  Lab rats that are not allowed to sleep die.  In 2012, a Chinese man reportedly died after 11 days without sleep. 

So, why did God make us to need sleep?  This is more than a question about the need for a Sabbath of rest.  For some reason, we were made so that every 16 hours or so we need, by the design of the Creator, to go to sleep.  We need to stay in that place of sleep for 8 to 10 hours.  We are made so that at least one third of our lives is completely unproductive.  God didn’t have to make us that way.  It was a choice He made in creating us and there must be a lesson in it for us.  Had He wanted to, He could have created us to renew our minds and bodies by having us eat or drink something.  He could have made us in such a way that sticking our thumb in the ground like an electrical plug could reenergize us.  He could have produced a system by which we stop for 5 minutes and be completely recharged for the day.  He could have even made us so that sleep would be completely unnecessary.  Think how much more we could get done if only we never needed to sleep! 

So, what lessons does the presence of sleep teach us?   Here are a few that came to my mind.

First, to quote C. S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters, God is a hedonist at heart.  He is not a hedonist in the debauched way that is the typical meaning of hedonism.  Rather, God wants us to enjoy good things fully and completely.  God makes some things simply for the pleasure that they bring.  A sunset could be shades of gray, all plants could replicate with no show, but God made flowers.  All food could taste like rutabagas, but we do have chocolate. There could be only one tone or pitch, but then what would the mockingbird outside my office sound like?  To say nothing of laughter, scents, breezes, waves or procreation.  I believe sleep is a delight to be enjoyed not a task to be done so we can be energized to do more work.  There is that delicious and euphoric feeling that comes over us as we begin to fall asleep. Face it, good sleep is a delight on the same level as a great meal, drink or friendship. 

Secondly, sleep is the time where we can get out of God’s way.  We think or at least act like we think that if we are doing the work of the Kingdom it won’t get done.  Sometimes the best things we can do are disengaging and leave the work alone.  When we do that, much to our surprise and delight, we discover that God has done what we, by all our striving and effort, could not do.  Being a driven personality or a workaholic is neither Biblical nor effective.  What if the best thing we can do for our work is to stop and sleep?  By the way, it is not just rest we need but sleep.  I know workaholics well enough to know that when they appear to be resting in the hammock, they are often times working in their heads. Yes, we are called to take the yoke, but we are also called to rest.  As a friend of mine likes to say, “When we work God rests, when we rest God works.”  Those of us who enjoy work need to also learn to revel in the delight of sleep.

Third, sleep is a profound statement of trust.  When you are asleep you are completely defenseless.  We never sleep without taking some measure of protection.  That is why we have homes with locks and security systems.  We post guards in forward military bases.  We hire police to patrol at night when most people are sleeping.  When you sleep you are defenseless and by sleeping you are making a statement of trust in protection.  The children’s prayer is more profound than we give it credit, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”  Tony Evans has three words he uses to assure his family of his care for them, “I got this.”  When we sleep we are saying to God, “I believe you have got this.”  We can use sleep as a reminder to trust in God’s care for us.  And begin each morning with the prayer, “We, thy needy creatures render thee our humble praise, for thy preservation of us from the beginning of our lives to this day and especially for having delivered us from the dangers of the past night.” 

Sleep is a powerful reminder how utterly dependent we are upon God for His care and protection. We are absolutely vulnerable in our sleep; we are more vulnerable than we would like to admit when we are awake. Sleep is a reminder of our vulnerability and of God's protection.

So, rather than looking at sleep as something that we have to do in order to be able to work well, we ought to consider sleep a great joy, a gift of grace, and a reminder of God's providential and specific care over us.