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“I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure.” –– Psalm 16:7-9
Caffeine, unspent energy, rousing kids in the winter’s darkness to get them to school on time, chemical imbalances, the movie you had to see to its end, the chapter you had to finish reading, the deadline for a term paper or a work project, the repetitive loop replaying a conversation gone wrong or a word said you can’t take back, worries, worries, and then more worries about your marriage, your children, your job, the diagnosis, the economy, your aging parents, the colors for the kitchen renovation, your weight, the reason why he or she didn’t respond to your text –– There are seemingly innumerable factors contributing to your inability to follow every known expert’s advice about getting those precious eight hours of sleep. You want to; you know you should; you feel like a zombie because you didn’t, and yet, for you, achieving eight hours of sleep seems as daunting as climbing from base camp to the summit of Everest.
There are probably as many sleep studies as there are sleepers, and I certainly cannot speak to the neurophysiological science of sleep, but I can point to the ancient psalmist’s counsel on decreasing the distance between worry and trust, a prerequisite for actual rest. “I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.” Psalms scholar James L. Mays said, “Trust is not merely a warm feeling or a passing impulse in a time of trouble; it is a structure of acts and experiences that open one’s consciousness to the Lord as the supreme reality of life.” Many people assume God to be a mirage of water in the desert, only attracting the gullible. Others approach God only when desert thirst sends them in search of a well. The psalmist, on the other hand, whether the landscape be desert or rainforest, engages the discipline of seeking, sensing, and encountering the Lord no matter the climate, circumstance, time, or mood. Elsewhere, the psalmist says, “… I shall not want … I fear no evil; for you are with me.”
With life, we are given two precious and undeniably exhaustible resources, time and energy. Can you honestly deny that we waste a large percentage of these limited resources on worry? Often, we are worrying over that which we cannot control, and then we spend additional time and energy worrying that we don’t have control over that which we cannot control. How wasteful is that? And it is these worries that are to life what a gas-powered Humvee is to the environment.
Understand that the psalmist here is not playing the role of Pollyanna, exuding optimism under the darkening shadow of the tidal wave. The psalmist is actually leaning into a realism that says –– Here I am. These are the things over which I have some influence, and this other list includes the things over which I have no control. I can trust in the Lord’s wisdom to guide me in wading through that which I can influence, and I can trust the Lord to sustain me and grant me peace in facing the things over which I have no control. “I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure.”
After all, rest in peace is not just a prayer for the dead, but also God’s hope for the living.
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