Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Wednesday. As many of you know, I don’t only produce this podcast; I also write books. And back in 2011, I was honored to write my very first book called Lit!. It was on the topic of book reading (one of my passions), answering the questions, ‘Why do we read books?’ and ‘How can we read them better?’ And in my research stage for the book, I set aside one full day for one purpose: to ransack the vast John Piper archive of online content to collect everything he’s ever said on the topic of reading. And I found quite a lot, actually, including one amazing quote from Pastor John back in 1981 that I want to share with you today:

What I have learned from about twenty years of serious reading is this: sentences change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99 percent of what I read, but if the 1 percent of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99 percent.

I love that quote. It was an amazing find, obviously. And that went in my 2011 book. The quote itself was buried in a now forty-year-old manuscript. Really buried. The moment I found it, I ran an online search and could not find any references to this quote on any websites or blogs, in any published books, or in any social-media post. And there was no audio recording of the message either. It was buried. All we had was the written manuscript at Desiring God. It was either not recorded or the message recording got lost to time. Or so we thought. Well, it was recorded. And we just found the audio recording from 1981. It’s now online for the first time ever at desiringGod.org. And I get the honor of unveiling that recording to you today on APJ.

Here’s the setting. In 1981, a young Pastor John wanted to instill hope in the Sunday school teachers of his church. Those teachers get one hour with the kids, and then the rest of the week, those kids watch hour after hour of TV. So isn’t it hopeless to think an hour of Sunday school can accomplish anything lasting in these young lives, so saturated with other media all week long? No. Here’s why.

I’ve often heard the contrast made between spending an hour in Sunday school, once a week, and watching television about twenty hours a week. And the implication or the point that’s usually made is that there’s scarcely any hope that in this one hour on Sunday morning, we can counteract the fairly secularist, humanist viewpoint that is, whether overtly or covertly, ministered through the television set. That sort of observation creates what I call “quantitative hopelessness.” It gives the impression that life-changing impact and influence is directly proportionate to the quantity of time spent under a particular influence. And I think that this way of assessing the value of influences on our young people, as well as on ourselves as adults, is wrong for two reasons.

I think it’s wrong, first, because it obscures the problem with evil. And then secondly, I think it’s wrong because it obscures the power of a holy moment. And I’ll try to explain what I mean by each of those two mistakes.

Does It Edify?

First of all, this quantitative way of thinking obscures the problem with evil in the world. It gives the misleading impression that the approach to take toward harmful influences — say, on television — is to balance them with good influences. That seems to be the approach. It assumes that the best or the only way to counteract the hours that we spend being entertained by the world and being taught to love the world is to spend a corresponding quantity of time being entertained or taught by God or God’s people so as to balance out the evil influences. And the underlying assumption to that assumption seems to be that either it’s okay or inevitable that our kids (or ourselves) will in fact entertain ourselves with secularist TV programs or unedifying TV programs.

I don’t think either of those is the case. I don’t think it’s inevitable, and I don’t think it’s okay. First of all, I don’t think it’s okay to entertain ourselves with what we would judge to be unedifying TV programs. Paul taught that we ought to do only those things that build up rather than tear down (1 Corinthians 14:12, 26; 2 Corinthians 13:10). I have the feeling that many people in the church don’t assess right and wrong on that continuum. They say, “Oh, there’s nothing wrong here; they’re not doing anything wrong,” when really, what they ought to be saying is, “Is it edifying, building me up, making me a better Christian, a better person?” Because Paul seemed to think that that’s what the goal or the aim of all of life should be — not just finding those things that we can judge to be not very harmful.

I would say that it’s true that most TV programs are not edifying. The few that I see, when I see them, don’t seem to me to be the kind that would leave me at the end of the program rejoicing more in God, being more inclined to obey him, feeling stronger affection for Christ, or more zealous to do good. They just don’t.

Immeasurable Moments

Now, there’s a second reason why I think it’s wrong just to assess Sunday school quantitatively and say, “Well, one hour — what’s one hour of Sunday school against twenty hours of TV or school or whatever?” The second reason that’s a problem, and we ought not to use it, is because it either overlooks or obscures the value of a holy moment. What I have in mind here is tremendously encouraging for teachers, but also all those involved in any kind of counsel or advice or ministry of any sort. I think it includes all of us. This holy moment is what I would call “the immeasurable moment.”

What the quantitative approach overlooks or obscures is the lasting transforming power of an insight, an insight that can come in a moment and change a life forever. That’s what I mean by “the immeasurable moment.” The impact of a given moment because of a word spoken can be all out of proportion to the amount of time it takes to do it. What I’ve learned from about twenty years of serious reading — I say twenty, it hasn’t been quite twenty. That takes me back to 15 years old. I didn’t start to read until I was about 17. I hated to read until I was a junior in high school. I started reading seriously though. I got really serious about reading, and I’ve been serious about reading ever since. There’s been about twenty years I’ve been reading. And what I have learned is this: it is sentences that change your life, not books.

I don’t know if that’s been your experience, but I think for the most part, that’s the case. What changes a life is a new glimpse into reality or truth, or some powerful challenge that comes to us, or some resolution of a long-standing dilemma that we’ve had. And most of those — the insight, the challenge, or the resolution — are usually embodied in a very short, little space. A paragraph or a sentence and whammo — it hits home, and we remember it, and it affects us for our whole life long.

“Usually for me, life-changing insight comes in a moment, in a paragraph, in a sentence, not in a book.”

I do not remember 99 percent of what I read. That may just be me because I have a lousy memory. I think it’s pretty typical. I don’t remember 99 percent of what I read, but if the 1 percent is life-changing insight into reality, I won’t begrudge the 99 percent. I’ll suffer that and accept it as my own frailty. Usually for me, life-changing insight — and I have been changed by reading — comes in a moment, in a paragraph, in a sentence, not in a book. I don’t remember books whole.

Now, here are some examples of immeasurable moments in my life from reading.

Edwards

You know who I’m going to start with first. Jonathan Edwards wrote 70 (or is it 73?) resolutions when he was in college — lifetime resolutions. And I have never forgotten number six: “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.” I have never forgotten that. That sentence has meant more to me than thousands of other sentences that I’ve ever read. Live with all your might while you live. Don’t just drift through life. Live through life. Live.

Second, in his Religious Affections, he said, “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” It was about four hundred pages or so, and I don’t remember most of what was in it, but I had never read a book that showed that true religion consists very much in holy affections. Now, that’s just his eighteenth-century word for emotions.

I had been brought up to think, “Fact, faith, feeling. Fact, faith, feeling. Fact, faith, feeling. Keep it in that order. And the feeling drops off the end — it’s just a caboose; you won’t miss anything anyway.” That isn’t true. The New Testament is shot through with demands that are so radical that they do demand joy, peace, hope, gratitude. I hesitate to mention love because you’d all jump up and say, “Love’s not a feeling.” But if you read 1 Corinthians 13 and how it’s defined, you can’t get away from the fact that love is not only a feeling but is at least partly a feeling. For example, love is not jealous (1 Corinthians 13:4). Jealousy is a feeling, and if you love, you don’t have that feeling. That was another staggering sentence, an immeasurable moment to hear Jonathan Edwards say and defend, “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.”

Paul

St. Paul. Of course, the Bible is just full of such sentences, but I’ll just mention one because it might tip you off and help you understand me and a lot of my preaching. I wonder what sentences you think I would pick out of St. Paul as the immeasurable moment that stands out above all others from 1968 to the present. It’s Philippians 2:12–13: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, to will and to do his good pleasure.” That sentence hit me my freshman year in seminary like a load of bricks, because all of Paul’s theology is in it (just about) — that intermingling of the sovereign work of God in our lives with our effort. You work, for he is working to will and to do.

Lewis

Next person, C.S. Lewis. This sentence comes on the first page of his Weight of Glory:

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (26)

And that sentence, along with several others, converted me into being what I’ve called a Christian Hedonist — namely, that what Jesus wants from us is not the cessation of the desire to be happy, but the heightening of the desire to be happy until it’s so intense we won’t be satisfied with anything but God as the fulfillment of our joy.

Augustine

Then finally, on reading St. Augustine — two sentences from the Confessions. I first read the Confessions of Augustine as a sophomore in college, I think. It was in Western World Literature, and I can’t remember when I took that course, but it was in my first or second year in college. And two sentences have shaped me very greatly.

First, “I have no hope at all, but in thy great mercy. Grant what thou commandest, and command what thou will.” It’s really the same as Philippians 2:12–13 but stated very, very powerfully. The impact it had was to show me that the book I was reading at the time, Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics, was wrong, because Fletcher argued that love cannot involve feelings because it’s commanded. You can’t command emotions; therefore, love must be an action — and therefore, it doesn’t involve any feelings. That’s not right. There’s a theological mistake in Fletcher’s argument — namely, the assumption that God can’t command what we can’t give without his help. But he can command what we can’t give without his help because he can give the help, and Augustine says, “Grant what thou commandest, and command what thou will.”

The context in the Confessions was sexual continency. Augustine was a raunchy man. He was very polluted sexually before he became a Christian, and after he became a Christian his problem with sexual temptation did not end. He was talking about sexual continency, containing himself and not being illicit in his sexual relations, and he said, “I cannot do it. Grant what thou commandest. Then command what thou will.”

“The experience comes of an immeasurable moment, and we are changed decisively.”

And then the other sentence that he said — I can’t remember when it was, but I have always struggled with the problem of how to love a sunset, a wife, a child, chocolate ice cream, popcorn, et cetera, and not have that compete with my allegiance to God. I don’t know if you’ve ever struggled with that. How can you stand before a beautiful painting or a sunset and say, “That is beautiful; I love it,” and not have God look down and say, “Hey, you’re supposed to love me, not that.” Here’s what Augustine said: “He loves thee too little, who loves anything together with thee, which he loves not for thy sake.” That was an immeasurable moment when I read that sentence. “He loves thee too little, who loves anything together with thee, that he loves not for thy sake.” That bears a lot of pondering, doesn’t it? We can love people, things, sunsets, food, for Jesus’s sake.

Sentences Change Lives

That’s the end of my list. It could go on and on and on. The point is that life-changing moments come in sentences and paragraphs, not in long, long remembrances of whole books. Lights go on, our hearts are strangely warm, the experience comes of an immeasurable moment, and we are changed decisively.

“So, you’re a trauma surgeon! Tell me, what was your best case?”

Suddenly, the studio lights glared uncomfortably bright. Undoubtedly, the interviewer wanted me to offer him a flashy, adrenaline-fueled scene worthy of TV docudramas, a story stuffed to the brim with clickbait. But for those of us who toil in the wages of sin over the long years, rarely do these heart-pumping rescues linger at the forefront of our minds.

Rather, my first thoughts were the horrors: The young man who shouted, “Help me!” before he fell unconscious and died in the CT scanner. The woman, broken with grief, who crawled into her dying daughter’s ICU bed to hold her one last time. The paraplegic father whose anguish over the sudden death of his son so wrecked him that he howled and pitched forward out of his wheelchair onto the floor.

When I offered the interviewer the truth, his enthusiasm fizzled before my eyes, and he changed the subject. I forced a smile, swallowed down the tightness in my throat, and struggled against the tide of grief that’s become as familiar and worn as a tattered coat. It’s a mantle common to many who walk beside the hurting — the heaviness that presses upon the heart when we’ve witnessed others’ suffering over and over and over.

Burden of Caregiving

In whatever avenue they serve — in chaplaincy, military service, health care, counseling, or simply loving friendship — Christian caregivers often share a similar heart, viewing mercy as fundamental to following Jesus. What more poignant way to fulfill the call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God than to come alongside others during their darkest hours (Micah 6:8)? How better to love a neighbor as ourselves than to dedicate the work of our hands to uplifting the downtrodden and afflicted (Matthew 22:39)?

Yet when we “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15), our tears can linger long after our work at the bedside or on the battlefield has finished. When we bear another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2) in the hospital, overseas, or in a dying loved one’s home, our shoulders can ache long after our service has ended. Suffering leaves a mark, and in ministry that uniquely seeks to love the hurting, we bear those marks repeatedly.

In fact, when we have a front-row seat to the wages of sin, we can start to question God’s goodness and sovereignty. Is he really in control when so many suffer? Does he really love us? How do we carry on when the suffering we witness steals all hope and breath? How do we lavish others with the healing word of Christ when our own wounds still sting?

Four Truths to Guard Your Heart

When ministering to the hurting, harboring God’s word in your heart is essential. The following four reminders from Scripture can equip caregivers to face repeated suffering with grace and perseverance so they might continue to show the love of Christ when their own hearts ache with weariness.

1. You are not alone.

Just as my interviewer couldn’t comprehend the tragedies I’d seen, so also few fully understand the suffering caregivers witness in their day-to-day ministry. In Moral Warriors, Moral Wounds, retired Navy chaplain Wollom Jensen reflects upon this phenomenon: “I know what it is to live with fear; to be appalled by the loss of human life; to be shamed by the experience of participating in war; and the feeling of having lost one’s youth in ways that those who have not been to war will never be able to understand” (2).

And yet, as isolated as we may feel in our experiences of suffering, the truth is that in Christ we are never alone. Jesus was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” He bore our afflictions and carried our sufferings (Isaiah 53:3–4). As the author of Hebrews writes, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

“Revel in the joy, the hope, the assurance we have in Christ that, when he returns, death shall be no more.”

God’s one and only Son — the Word who was with the Father when he stirred the heavens into existence — took on flesh, dwelt among us, and endured the same agonies and wounds that so trouble us. Most magnificent of all, Christ bore such suffering for us (Isaiah 53:4–5). He bore our burdens, knows our tears, and has journeyed through the shadowy valley. Astonishingly, he walks with us even now. “Behold,” he has promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

2. God works through suffering.

The Bible overflows with examples of God working through our trials to bring about what is beautiful, good, and right (Romans 8:28). Remember Joseph, who endured assault, enslavement, and exile at the hands of his treacherous brothers, but who saw God at work in it all. “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive” (Genesis 50:20).

Consider John 11, when Jesus delayed in going to the bedside of his dying friend Lazarus. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Martha lamented (John 11:21). And yet, his delay served a stunning purpose: to draw dozens of the lost to himself (John 11:42, 45).

Most of all, consider the cross. God worked through his Son’s agony and death to accomplish the greatest feat in all of history — the redemption of fallen sinners and the restoration of God’s people to himself as his adopted children (John 3:16; 1 John 3:1).

If God could work good through sorrows as deep as these, then surely he can do the same in our own sorrows — however piercing, however confusing, however long-lasting.

3. God invites you into his rest.

When working in the fields of heartbreak, the grave responsibility of caregiving can overwhelm us. In such moments, opening our hands to Jesus brings relief. Remember, we are not saviors. We are laborers in the harvest, but salvation comes through Christ alone, and any good we effect is through his will, not our own (Ephesians 2:10).

God is the Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, worthy of all praise; we, on the other hand, are fallen, finite, and weak. We are not enough. When we acknowledge our frailty and confess our failings before God, his grace increases all the more: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Turn over your grief to the Lord. Come to him earnestly in heartfelt prayer. “[Cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Remember Jesus’s invitation: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).

4. Death is swallowed up in victory.

A dear friend and sister in Christ, for whom I served as caregiver for five years, recently fell asleep in Jesus. As I held her hand, felt her pulse become thready, and watched her breathing slow as her earthly life waned, a thought recurred in my mind: this is precisely why Jesus came. To liberate us from these shackles. To save us, in stunning grace, from the wages of our sins (Romans 6:23).

The gospel shatters death’s hold on us. Jesus has swallowed up death in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54). He endured the cross so we might endure our own death. He rose from the tomb so that we, too, will rise. Death shall be no more. In this fallen, broken world, trials will afflict us, but Christ has overcome (John 16:33).

When Death Is Done

“So we do not lose heart,” Paul writes, reflecting upon the gospel.

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18)

My brothers and sisters, when you sit beside the dying and come alongside the grieving, when you seek to share the gospel in dark places, allow the light of Christ to embolden and guide you. The things that are seen and transient wither before the blinding Light of the world. Let that light illuminate your mind. Let his word guide your path. Revel in the joy, the hope, the assurance we have in Christ that, when he returns, “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore,” for the former things will have passed away (Revelation 21:4).

A good night’s sleep, like so many of God’s gifts, is one of those ordinary glories you don’t quite appreciate until it’s gone. As a fracture shows the worth of working bones, and a bout with the flu teaches the value of health, so sleeplessness has a way of turning a normal night’s rest into a land of gold.

A recent season of mysterious sleeplessness made me wonder how I had taken such a precious gift for granted. It also gave me a sense of what many deal with — for one reason or another — for far longer than a season. The low-grade dread of nighttime. The rising anxiety when sleep does not come. The toss, turn, bathroom break, book, pillow flip, toss, turn. The slow procession of silent hours. The fear of another exhausted day. The dull burn behind the eyes come morning.

On such nights, or in such seasons, Psalm 127:2 can feel less like a warm sentiment and more like a blessing beyond reach — or even (in our desperation) a taunt. “He gives to his beloved sleep,” Solomon says. So how do we respond when he takes from his beloved sleep?

Psalms in the Night

We might start by considering what else the Psalms have to say. Psalm 127:2 may be the book’s most familiar line about sleep, but it is not the only line: nighttime testimonies are scattered through these 150 songs like so many stars. And surprisingly — especially for the weary among us — the psalmists often found something in sleeplessness worth singing about.

True, nighttime could bring weeping (Psalm 30:5), lonely ruminating (Psalm 77:1–2), tired moaning (Psalm 6:6), or a sense of God-forsakenness (Psalm 22:1–2). But the same hours could also bring a song in the night (Psalm 42:8; 149:5), a word from above (Psalm 16:7), and a sense of the steadfast love of the Lord (Psalm 8:3–4; 136:9).

By faith, the psalmists discovered that sleeplessness could become a sanctuary adorned with the glory and goodness of God (Psalm 119:55, 62), and that no hour was too early (Psalm 119:147) or too late (Psalm 119:148) to pray and praise and meditate. Whereas I often experience sleeplessness as famine, they could taste it as feast (Psalm 63:5–6).

Nighttime was no dead, blank space to these saints of old — a time when, functionally, God was absent. God was near in these “watches of the night” (Psalm 63:6; Psalm 119:148), there to be sung to, prayed to, remembered, loved.

Midnight Means of Grace

We need not imagine, of course, that David, Asaph, and the others relished sleeplessness itself. The psalmists were not superhumans; they, like us, needed about seven or eight hours of sleep a night to function well. Surely, then, they would encourage the sleepless to ask for rest from the God who gives it (and to seek that rest using reasonable natural means).

But suppose we have prayed and done what we can to get the sleep our body needs, yet we still find ourselves staring holes in the bedroom ceiling. What can we do? How might we follow the psalmists beyond the misery of sleeplessness and into the comfort of a God-filled night?

1. Declare God’s sovereignty over nighttime.

Yours also the night. (Psalm 74:16)

Left to myself, I do not naturally treat nighttime as a God-filled land; I am more prone to treat it as a God-forsaken one. How quickly my thoughts can turn over the past day’s events, and how hesitatingly they can turn to him. How quickly I can attach my hopes to a sleeping pill or some other remedy, and how slowly to “the God of my life” (Psalm 42:8). How reflexively I can see sleeplessness as mere menace, and how reluctantly as somehow God’s servant (Psalm 119:91).

Yet how differently the psalmists saw nighttime. Good Bible readers that they were, they knew that night, no less than day, was God’s creation, with moon and stars testifying to his power even over the deepest darkness (Psalm 104:20; 136:7–9). They remembered too how the same God who led his people by cloud during the day led them by fire at night (Psalm 78:14; 105:39). And so, they saw his glory in black skies just as they did in blue (Psalm 19:2), they confessed night to be bright as day to him (Psalm 139:12), and they hailed him as King over darkness. “Yours is the day, yours also the night,” they sang (Psalm 74:16). Midnight belongs to the Lord.

“The watches of the night may lie outside my control; they do not lie outside God’s.”

The confession may be basic, but it has a way of fitting unwanted wakefulness within a larger Godward frame. The watches of the night may lie outside my control; they do not lie outside God’s. His sovereignty rules my sleeplessness. So instead of merely enduring the nighttime hours, I can begin to trace his hand in the dark.

2. Search your heart.

I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. (Psalm 16:7)

We should beware of over-spiritualizing sleeplessness. Often, our inability to sleep says more about our technology habits or our exercise routines than our souls. Still, we also should beware of under-spiritualizing sleeplessness — and in our secular age, this may be the more common danger. We would do well, then, to at least consider (alongside wise friends) what God might be saying in our restlessness.

It may be, for example, that sleeplessness comes from God’s heavy hand, sent to search out unconfessed sin. When King David “kept silent” about his sin, he writes, “Day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer” (Psalm 32:4). The distress eventually brought David to his knees, where he confessed his hidden sin and received the forgiveness God was so willing to give (Psalm 32:5). God took David’s sleep for the sake of his soul.

Other nights, we may search our hearts and find not guilt but needed wisdom. Such was David’s experience in another psalm: “I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me” (Psalm 16:7). The word instructs, often translated discipline, “has a purposeful firmness,” Derek Kidner writes, “as of schooling one to face hard facts” (Psalms 1–72, 102). So may our wakeful hearts instruct us, if we let them — perhaps impressing upon us the need for some difficult conversation, or the ways we are beginning to drift in our devotion to God, or the helpfulness of a course correction in work or family life. The heart’s quiet counsel is often drowned by daytime noise; in the silence of night, however, its voice may be heard.

In the book of Esther, the plot hinges on a providential sleepless night (Esther 6:1). Our lives are likely not caught up in the drama of nations — but might there be more happening in our own sleeplessness than we assume?

3. Meditate on God’s word and works.

My soul will be satisfied . . . when I remember you upon my bed. (Psalm 63:5–6)

If we had to name one bridge between us and the psalmists’ experience — if there were one key that opened the door of night, one word that transfigured the darkness — meditation would be it. By meditation, the tears of Psalm 42:3 become the steadfast love and song of Psalm 42:8. By meditation, the night watches in Psalm 119 become a time not of dread but of anticipation (Psalm 119:148). And by meditation, David’s sleepless soul is satisfied.

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate upon you in the watches of the night. (Psalm 63:5–6)

Of course, as most know, meditation does not come easily, and especially at midnight. Simply survey the string of disciplined I will statements in Psalm 77:11–12 to sense the kind of resolution required. We instinctively meditate on our current troubles and tomorrow’s tasks, but how do we learn to “meditate upon you” (Psalm 63:6)?

We can take some cues from the psalmists’ own practice. Asaph, for one, fastened his mind on “the deeds of the Lord, . . . your wonders of old” (Psalm 77:11). Can you tell yourself the story of the exodus, or walk through the wonders of Holy Week? The author of Psalm 119 meditated on “your name” and “your promise” (Psalm 119:55, 148). Can you turn over the phrases of Exodus 34:6–7, or ponder Jesus’s sevenfold “I am” (John 6:35; 8:12; 10:7, 11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1)? Can you rehearse some marvelous memorized promise, receiving each word as if from God himself? David, meanwhile, remembered how “you have been my help” (Psalm 63:7). Can you recall the answered prayers and interventions of days’ or years’ past, assuring yourself that the God who helped you then will help you now and tomorrow?

One friend of mine, psalmist-like, decides before he lies down what he will meditate on should the night find him awake. Such planning — and pre-bedtime praying — may help us respond to sleeplessness as Asaph did: “Let me remember my song in the night; let me meditate in my heart” (Psalm 77:6).

Return, O My Soul, to Your Rest

We might go on to describe the many ways the psalmists speak to God after meditating upon God — how they declare his faithfulness (Psalm 92:2), praise his righteousness (Psalm 119:62), sing his goodness (Psalm 63:7), and cry for his help (Psalm 119:147). Such responses illustrate the truth of Henry Scougal’s line that “to be able to converse in an instant with him whom their souls love transforms the darkest prison or wildest desert [or most restless night!], making them not only bearable but almost delightful” (The Life of God in the Soul of Man, 81). The suggestions given may suffice for a start.

“The mercies of the Lord, new every morning, are strong enough to last through midnight.”

Though I cannot claim to have reached the heights of a Psalm 63 or Psalm 119, I long to be a pupil of these sleepless saints. Even as I pray for the rest my body so badly needs, I long to say with the psalmist, “Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you” (Psalm 116:7). I long for sleeplessness to become a sanctuary, my pillow a place of prayer and praise.

Such saints can testify that the mercies of the Lord, new every morning, are strong enough to last through midnight.