“In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord,
make me dwell in safety."
Psalm 4:8
We begin our lives asleep in the womb, formed by another. Passive in the darkness, we are made. When we finally venture into daylight action, we are not done with the passivities of sleep but return to them at once. In our early days we are more asleep than awake, as another, and others nourish us into the wholeness that we have neither the wisdom nor the strength to fashion ourselves. Gradually our waking hours lengthen and we take up for ourselves tasks others did for us, entering into the work of the world—loving, helping, feeding, healing, building, teaching, making.
But we never arrive at a condition where we are beyond sleep, self-sufficient in twenty-four-hour control. Daily we give up consciousness, submitting ourselves to that which is deeper than consciousness in order to grow and be healed, be created and saved. Going to sleep is a biological necessity; it can also be an act of faith. People who live by faith have always welcomed the evening hour of prayer, disengaging themselves from the discordant, arrhythmic confusion of tongues, and sinking into the quiet rhythms of God’s creating and covenanting words.
Are you able to go to sleep in peace, believing deep down that the Lord keeps you secure during the night hour?
Lord, now I lay me down to sleep, believing that my soul you’ll keep. Amen.
"Welcome the Evening" by Eugene Peterson
Excerpt From: “Faith That Matters: 365 Devotions from Classic Christian Leaders.”
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