How Sleeping Teaches Us Our Need for Sabbath |
Editor's Note: Yesterday, we shared a devotion written by Justin Whitmel Earley, author of The Body Teaches the Soul. You can read it here and then continue reading below. * Sleeping — Honor Rest The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep. ~ Matthew Walker, PhD Once a day God sends us to bed like patients with a sickness. The sickness is a chronic tendency to think we are in control and that our work is indispensable. It is like a broken record that comes around with the same message every day: Man is not sovereign. Man is not sovereign. Man is not sovereign. ~ John Piper Everything I have learned about the body teaching the soul began with my inability to sleep. It is more than ironic that I became a person who struggled to sleep, because I spent so much of my twenties avoiding sleep. I cannot help but cringe when I remember things I would say to other people in college: "Sleep is for the weak" or "I'll sleep when I'm dead." I have no desire to judge my younger self too harshly; there is grace for him too, and I was probably not all that different from a lot of college students. But I do look back and see a real and strange error in my view of the body: I really did believe sleep was optional. I was shocked out of this view in my anxiety crisis, when my inability to sleep suddenly leapt to center stage in my life. My nights in that period became characterized by a deep fear that I would not sleep, and a deep exhaustion from how often that fear came true. Suddenly, in a total flip from the rest of my life, I went from thinking sleep was optional to thinking it was not an option at all, so I looked to sleeping pills to enable it. Sadly, the pills made everything worse because of their bad side effects. Sleeping pills knocked me out for a few hours, but they perpetuated the emotional turmoil of not having a good natural rhythm of rest. In retrospect, I see that I used them to try to force sleep into the space of a life that otherwise made no natural room for it. I was treating the surface symptom of a much deeper problem: I did not understand how to live a life that honors rest. So I flipped from one stage of ignoring sleep to another stage of idolizing it, neither of which honors the image of God we are given in sleep. Ignoring or idolizing sleep is the easiest thing to do in a culture that presents a view of humans as being fundamentally in control. But the Bible presents a different view, one in which we are vulnerable, limited, and in need of care. Our physical need to honor sleep is the beginning of learning how our need to rest is a spiritual gift from God. | |
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Where sabbath emphasizes our similarity to God, sleep emphasizes our natural, created limitations. |
Where sabbath emphasizes our similarity to God, sleep emphasizes our natural, created limitations. |
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The God of Rest The Bible claims rest is so important that it puts it in the first chapter of the whole book. It is hard to describe how bizarre this is in terms of creation narratives. Other ancient cultures have stories of warring gods whose victories create the world; modern cultures tend toward stories of the uncaring forces of physics that explode into the world we know. Yet the Bible paints the picture of a strange combination of God's power and gentleness. If other creation narratives paint a picture of a blood-soaked warrior as creator, Christianity presents something more like a master artist contemplating his work. This contrast is true for moderns too. A materialist view understands our world as an unceasing battle of the survival of the fittest in which you'd better keep up, but Christianity sees the world as a generous gift, one we can even relax in. So in Christianity we encounter the tension between intimidating power and intentional rest. God speaks creation into existence, but He also sits back to rest and admire it. We, who are created in God's image, bear a version of this same coin. We are mighty, at least when we are awake. But suddenly, we want a nap. Modern science does not have a great explanation for sleep. Sure, theories admit that brains so large as ours need lots of rest to power them. But theories of evolution also openly admit that it is hard to explain the paradox of sleep: Lying completely still, unaware of the world, and vulnerable to predators for a third of your existence seems like the most counterproductive habit to develop for survival. And by the way, there are plenty of species with well-developed brains who do not need to sleep like we do.1 We know that sleep benefits virtually every physiological process in life, and we know the lack of it hurts more or less every other physiological process.2 But if you read the literature carefully, we really do not know why: "Sleep has been tied to a great many biological processes — consolidating memories, restoring hormonal balance, emptying the brain of accumulated neurotoxins, resetting the immune system... But why we should be required to so utterly give up consciousness for this is a question yet to be answered."3 The Bible, actually, does present an answer. Albeit, one we may not like: We are made with limits. One aspect of being made in the image of God is that there are always two sides to the coin. On the one hand, being made in God's image is a window into how we are like God. On the other hand, it's a window into how much image bearers are still not God. Both aspects are crucial to understanding who we are. When it comes to sleep, we are like God in our desire to rest, but unlike God in our need for sleep. |
How We Are Like God in Our Desire for Rest One of the fundamental biblical principles is that sabbath is a rhythm of the created order. God, as infinite and inexhaustible as He is, chooses rest. This tells us something about the spiritual DNA of image bearers: that we were made for regular rhythms of embracing rest. Note that God's sabbath rest is distinct from our sleep. Sabbath rest is not because God was tired and couldn't carry on creating. His is not the rest of exhaustion but rather the rest of satisfaction, of dedicating time set apart. God delights in His work and sits back to admire and honor it. Our culture can learn volumes from this. As bearers of the image of God, we are built for the rhythm of stepping back and honoring what is good. Hence, we are not just given the gift of sabbath rest but are commanded to observe the weekly rhythm of sabbath rest.4 How We Are Unlike God in Our Need for Sleep While we are like God in our need for sabbath, we are unlike God in our need for sleep. The psalms tell us to take comfort in this fact.5 Like a parent who sleeps lightly so his or her child can sleep deeply, God likewise does not sleep so that we can be at rest. This need for sleep is similar to but different from our need for sabbath. Where sabbath emphasizes our similarity to God, sleep emphasizes our natural, created limitations. This is one of the fundamental things to understand about the human body as God created it: We are not machines. We are not infinite. We grow weary and tired, and that is a feature, not a flaw.6 In God's design, we are made to sleep. Certainly, after sin enters the world after the fall, sleep also is a way of healing from pain. But that doesn't make our need for rest wrong, it just means sleep is also now a grace. We don't sleep because we're weak. We don't sleep because we're sinful. Our resistance of sleep may be sin, but our need for it is not. We sleep because God gave us the divine gift of rest. Sleep as Gift Some of us idolize the gift of sleep by overindulging it, but most of us will die younger from ignoring it. We know all kinds of things that hinder good sleep. Most of them you could predict: late naps, caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, electric light, smartphones, and sugary and rich foods mess up our sleep. Alternatively, a good diet, consistent bedtimes, dark rooms, and exercise help us sleep. Sleep is not a need we manage and control so much as it is a gift we accept and aspire to steward well. In order to see sleep as a gift, two benefits are worth exploring: In sleep, God gives us natural sources of therapy and creativity. |
- We know of life forms that do not sleep (jellyfish) and of large mammals that make it with only three or so hours a night (elephants) and of others that rest only half their brains at a time and sleep with one eye open (dolphins). All of those options seem better for survival, but humans regularly render themselves completely vulnerable for some third of their existence.
- Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants (New York: Doubleday, 2019), 260.
- Bryson, The Body, 260–61.
- Exodus 20:8–10: "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God."
- Psalm 121:4 (ESV): "Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep."
- See generally, Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2022).
Excerpted with permission from The Body Teaches the Soul by Justin Whitmel Early, copyright Avodah Holdings, LLC. * |
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It's Sunday! Take a sabbath rest! Nap. Read. Unplug. It's God's gift to you! ~ Devotionals Daily |
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Ten Essential Habits to Form a Healthy and Holy Life |
The Body Teaches the Soul |
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Your body is more spiritual than you think. How can we preach a gospel of peace, yet still find our bodies wracked by anxiety? How do we call our bodies temples of the Holy Spirit, yet regard eating, exercise, or sleep as inherently "unspiritual" activities? How is it that modern Christians who claim God made their bodies have come to care so little about them? Justin Whitmel Earley--bestselling author of The Common Rule and Habits of the Household--is intimately familiar with the consequences of ignoring the body. As a young lawyer, Earley collapsed into anxiety and insomnia that nearly ruined his life. In his journey back to mental and spiritual health, he realized that the healthy and unhealthy habits shaping his life weren't physical or spiritual; they were physical and spiritual. |
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The Body Teaches the Soul is a practical guide to the union of body and spirit in our overall health. With his characteristic vulnerability and story-driven approach, Earley shares personal failures, fascinating research, and biblical wisdom to reveal ten simple habits that will improve your health and deepen your relationship with God. In these pages, you will: - Connect deeply and positively with your body as the image of God while avoiding the mistakes of ignoring or idolizing the body
- Explore how daily patterns of healthy eating can be as spiritual as fasting and how rhythms of feasting can become guilt-free celebrations of the world God made
- Recover your mental health through upper-brain spiritual truths that work together with lower-brain physical practices to reshape thought patterns
- Develop a sleep routine that honors your body's need for rest and your soul's need for sabbath
- Discover how to lament sickness and injury while still praying with hope for the miracle of healing
- Learn how exercise can create a humble lifestyle of loving others with your body instead of becoming a vain search for body image
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