A Theology of Sleep

In my Quiet Time this morning ("QT", to be honest, is probably too strong a term given the rich heritage of this evangelical practice.....I could barely keep my eyes open I was so tired. Nonetheless I was able to do a bit of speaking and listening that gave some acknowledgement, at the front end of the day, that He is the Potter and I am the clay....how easily and quickly I get that the wrong way round...) I was in Psalm 1-5. Through heavy eyelids I was moved by the power (and irony given my state) of Psalm 3:5:

I lie down to sleep;
I wake again, becasue the Lord sustains me.

"I wake again, becasue the Lord sustains me".... so.... everytime I wake up it's testimony to the grace of God. It's only because He is good, merciful and faithful that I wake up every morning. It means that even whilst I'm asleep God is still at work sustaining all He has made, which includes me! Maybe, if I grasp this truth in my spirit, then the simple act of waking up in the morning will become a means of grace for me (an instrument by which God imparts his blessing).....it would be great if it did.

Perhaps John Baillie in his book Christian Devotion really is on to something when he writes:

I think we hear far too few sermons about sleep. After all, we spend a very large share of our lives sleeping. I suppose that on average I've slept for eight hours out of every twenty-four during the whole of my life, and that means I've slept for well over twenty years. Don’t you agree then that the Christian gospel should have something to say about the sleeping third of our lives as well as the waking two-thirds of them?