“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
If we mix this verse with one like 1 Peter 5:7, we hear our call to forged all our anxiety upon the Lord. This is what we do as we go to sleep. As we recite the entire things that are worrying us or causing anxiety, we embrace the humility of letting go. As you drift off into sleep, give these items to the Lord.
The ultimate answer to our sleep problem is Christ because Christ is the One who’s setting all things right. Our anxieties, the realities that our brain cannot process, our fears, and our must “be careful for potential trauma” all come as a consequence of the autumn. Christ has, and is, overturning the autumn.
In his book You’re Only Human, Kelly Kapic addresses the spiritual discipline of sleep. He says,
Sleep is a spiritual discipline that every day reminds us of our lack of control. Just as a king will not be saved just by the scale of his army or a warrior by his strength alone (Ps. 33:16-18), so sleep reminds us every day that we will not rescue ourselves: we’re never strong enough, we never know enough, we never can do enough to eliminate our vulnerability. And so sleep is an act of religion. It requires us to see our finitude as a part of God’s design for us. (Kapic, 217)
As an act of religion, we exercise this discipline through our union with Christ. We lay our head right down to rest because we all know Christ has accomplished our work.
Sleep well.
Photo credit: Unsplash/Kinga Cichewicz
