For some saints, in some seasons, the spiritual darkness can rest so thick, and last so long, that normal patterns of obedience begin to feel futile.

We’ve read and prayed and fought temptation, for weeks or months or maybe years. But now, perhaps, we wonder what’s the point. Why read when little changes? Why pray when God seems silent? Why obey in the lonely dark when no one seems to see or care? The days have been sunless for so long; why live as if the sky will soon turn bright?

Not all of God’s people have known such seasons. But for those who have, or will, God has not left us friendless. Here in the dark, a brother walks before us, his day far blacker than ours, his obedience a torch on the road ahead.

His story takes place on Good Friday, dark Friday, dead Friday. For some time, he had let his hope take flight, daring to believe he had seen, in Jesus, his own Messiah’s face. But then Friday came, and he watched that face drain into gray; he saw his Lord hang limp upon the cross. And somehow, someway, he did not flee. He did not fall away. He did not sink into despair.

Instead, Joseph of Arimathea “took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus” (Mark 15:43). Three nails and a spear had snuffed out his sun. And without any light to guide him, Joseph still obeyed.

Joseph’s Unlikely Obedience

In this simple account of Jesus’s burial, we find a most unlikely obedience.

First, Joseph was not one of the twelve disciples, whom we might expect to see at such a moment. Until now, in fact, he had followed Jesus “secretly” (John 19:38). “A respected member of the council” (Mark 15:43), Joseph was a disciple in high places, a man who kept his allegiances mostly quiet. Yet on Good Friday, when his allegiance was least likely to do him good, he speaks.

Second, burying Jesus would have cost Joseph dearly. Financially, he bought the linen shroud himself and placed Jesus in a tomb he had just cut — no doubt with other purposes in mind (Mark 15:46; Matthew 27:57). Ceremonially, handling a dead body rendered him unclean. And socially, he embraced the indignity of touching blood and sweat, of bending his grown body under another’s, as if he were a slave or Roman soldier.

Third, and most surprising, Joseph, along with the other disciples, had every reason to feel his hopes crucified, breathless as the body he carried. We have no cause to suspect he saw the resurrection coming. Like the eleven, huddled in that hopeless locked room, he surely expected the stone to stay unmoved.

To be sure, Joseph’s act was beautiful. But by all appearances, it was hopelessly beautiful. Beautiful like a farmer in famine, tenderly planting a seed he never expects to see. Beautiful like the last living soldier, marching into battle alone.

And yet, maybe even then, Joseph’s hope had one more star still shining. And maybe it has enough life to give light to ours.

Last Star in the Sky

Amid all the darkness, a glimmer appears, faint and far off. Joseph, Luke tells us, “was looking for the kingdom of God” (Luke 23:51). He was looking on Friday morning; somehow, he was still looking on Friday evening, even as he held the kingdom’s dead King. What light sustained such a look?

Perhaps Joseph remembered how his father Abraham had believed “in hope . . . against hope” (Romans 4:18). And perhaps he, like Abraham, carried this slain Isaac to the tomb considering, on some dim level, “that God was able even to raise him from the dead” (Hebrews 11:19).

“God’s kingdom often advances most in the midst of unexpected, unlikely obedience.”

Perhaps he recalled how God had lit up black mornings before, raising the sun as if from a tomb. Perhaps he faintly wondered whether this lifter of Lazarus might somehow lift himself. Perhaps he held the shadow of a hope that Jesus was still somehow the Christ, and that the Christ couldn’t stay dead forever. The Pharisees remembered that Jesus said, “After three days I will rise” (Matthew 27:63); maybe Joseph did too. Maybe he couldn’t forget.

Either way, hope held a few final breaths in Joseph’s lungs, even after Jesus’s had left. So, he put one heavy foot in front of the other. He defied despair, defied his feelings, defied probabilities, and held the man he had followed. He walked under the gathered darkness of Good Friday, a man weighed down with the world’s dying hope. He took this lifeless King, carefully buried him, and somehow still believed his kingdom would come.

Have you known such a hope, one that meets you on dark mornings and rolls away the covers like a stone? Have you learned to look for the kingdom under the light of the sky’s last star? And if not, can you follow Joseph’s footprints, and dare to obey even when hope seems dead?

Courage to Keep Looking

We might imagine that experiences like Joseph’s have ceased on this side of the empty tomb. While Christ lives, can hope ever seem dead? No doubt, Joseph walked on unique ground. No saint since him has fought to believe and obey under circumstances so dire. None of us has held our Lord’s dead body.

But we should beware of underestimating how confused, futile, dark, and hopeless we can feel, even with Easter behind us. Jesus spoke of dark and cold days to come (Matthew 24:12). Peter wrote of grief and Paul of desperate groaning (1 Peter 1:6; Romans 8:22–25). At times, the great apostle himself bent down — discouraged, weary, “perplexed” (2 Corinthians 4:8). Post-Easter, our hope ever lives and reigns, but we cannot always see him. Some nights here seem too dark.

We might wish to walk beneath skies always bright, our hands full of breathing hope, our faith nearly turned to sight. Those days do come and, oh, what a gift they are. Looking for the kingdom feels easy then. So does obeying the King.

But for many of us, days will come when we feel more like Joseph, looking for a kingdom we cannot see. Our feelings may tell us the kingdom is dead, just as Jesus’s tomb seemed closed forever. But as Joseph’s story reminds us, God’s kingdom often advances most in the midst of unexpected, unlikely obedience. The tree inches upward, unseen, from the mustard seed. The leaven spreads silently through the lump. And in the midnight of our obedience, the darkness of the tomb awaits the moment when lungs will fill again with hope.

So then, with Joseph, take courage. Keep praying, keep waiting, keep looking for the kingdom you cannot trace. Set your weary heart like a watchman on the walls, asking and aching for morning. Obey your Lord in the darkness, and dare to believe that he will bring the dawn.

If you look deep inside yourself, you may notice, to your dismay, the presence of a singularly unattractive creature. You’ll need to look carefully, because he doesn’t move quickly (or sometimes at all). He camouflages under bed covers. He prefers the mumble over the clear word. His eyelids droop half open; his mouth holds back a dribble of drool. His name is sluggard.

We may prefer to keep the sluggard at a distance, to view this lazy creature only through binoculars or zoo glass. But somehow, he finds a native habitat in every soul, even the most hardworking. When the alarm buzzes, he paws the snooze. When a work project calls for relentless focus, he quietly opens a new browser tab. When some unwelcome duty faces us, one we’ve already put off too long, he nevertheless counsels, “Tomorrow.”

We may hesitate to study the sluggard, preferring to spare ourselves such an unseemly sight. But sometimes, our lazy self dies only when we take a long and careful look at him. “I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,” the wise man tells us. “Then I saw and considered it; I looked and received instruction” (Proverbs 24:30, 32).

As we listen to the sluggard’s mutterings and consider the outcome of his laziness, we learn, by contrast, about a life of labor under the fear of the Lord. So, what instruction might the wise receive as they consider their inner sluggard?

1. ‘A little’ adds up.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest . . . (Proverbs 24:33)

The candy wrappers strewn around the sluggard’s bed, nearly ankle high now, all have one thing in common: in the moment, they were each “a little.” A little snack, a little break, a little reward, a little treat. He squandered his parents’ allowance in much the same way. Just one more in-app purchase. Just a little more takeout.

The wise hear and receive instruction. “A little,” it turns out, is anything but — at least when joined to a thousand other littles. Many little raindrops make a lake. Many little chops fell a tree. And therefore, how we handle little — little temptations, little decisions, little opportunities for self-denial — matters a lot.

Solomon points us to one of God’s littlest creatures as evidence. “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6). Yes, ants are tiny, this one carrying a speck of dirt, that one a bit of leaf, a third a crumb of bread. An ant cannot accomplish much quickly, but over time, by little and little, an anthill rises from the dirt; a network of underground tunnels takes shape; a colony is warm and fed.

Too often, in fleeing from my inner sluggard, I have tripped from trying to run too fast. Reckoning with how destructive the sluggard’s littles can be, I have thought, “Much! I must do much!” I will finish ten projects this week — no, twenty! I will work out Monday through Friday without exception! I will lead thirty-minute family devotions every night!

Sometimes, indeed, the path from the sluggard’s home rises steep and takes a running start. But most of the time, we are wiser to walk, exchanging little follies for little wisdoms, developing modest, ant-like resolutions and then building upon them. Along the way, we refuse this little compromise for that little obedience; we shun this little laziness for that little labor. We lay each little difficulty before our Father in heaven. And little by little, we receive from him the strength to work more diligently.

2. Neglect grows weeds.

I passed by the field of a sluggard . . . and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns. (Proverbs 24:30–31)

As he rolls over on his bed, or goes for thirds at lunch, the sluggard hardly imagines he is doing any harm. What damage can a little more snoozing do? What’s the problem with a few more mouthfuls? But while he sleeps and snacks and sings a little tune, thorns quietly take over his yard. The sluggard didn’t plant the thorns himself, of course — but by not working, he might as well have. If we do not furrow and plow, and sow good seed, by default we prepare the ground for other purposes. Neglect grows weeds.

Imagine, then, that along comes one of those little moments: Keep working on homework, or watch last night’s highlights? Read the Bible and pray, or enjoy nine more minutes of pillowed bliss? Focus hard for the next hour and finish the project, or check email (again)? We may think such little indulgences are merely neutral, harmless parentheses in the midst of our labors.

“The home of the lazy man and the destroyer end up looking the same. The only difference is speed.”

But whenever we allow the sluggard to grasp our hand, we not only pause from good work, but we produce weeds. Perhaps, for the moment, the weeds appear only in our own soul, as we tutor ourselves in the school of sloth. Or perhaps the weeds grow up for all to see — in half-done work and broken commitments, silly excuses and abandoned responsibilities. Either way, as another proverb puts it, “Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys” (Proverbs 18:9). The home of the lazy man and the destroyer end up looking the same. The only difference is speed.

The sluggard, then, often looks innocent. Surely we could think of more harmful creatures than this smiling sloth, drooped upon his branch. But the wise see through him. “If I don’t disciple my children today, I simply welcome the world to do so.” “If I don’t initiate this hard conversation, I jeopardize this relationship.” “If I don’t finish this work while I have the chance, I will lay the burden on another’s shoulders.”

We are not doing nothing when we play the sluggard. We are growing weeds, toppling walls, chipping foundations, and cultivating thorns, even if ever so slowly.

3. Our desires often deceive us.

The desire of the sluggard kills him. (Proverbs 21:25)

The sluggard’s desires feel like his closest friends, his wisest aids. Their counsels sound so pleasing: “No, don’t mow the lawn now. Looks like rain anyway.” “No, don’t speak of Jesus today, not in this conversation. The time will come (maybe).” “Let your wife change the baby’s diaper. You’re recuperating.” Such wonderful suggestions. Such seductive assassins.

Wisdom puts the matter bluntly: “The desire of the sluggard kills him” (Proverbs 21:25). Kills offers a bit of hyperbole, perhaps, but only a bit. In that culture and time, survival depended on labor, on calloused hands and plowed fields and harvested crops and long days. The world was once a harsher place for sluggards.

Laziness is not so lethal today, at least not in many places. But the wise know that even if “the desire of the sluggard” does not take his life, it takes almost everything else. It takes the joy of a good day’s sweat. It takes the peace of relationships carefully kept. It takes the reward of talents well stewarded. The sluggard may enjoy an easier existence — for a few days, or a few minutes. But then every part of life becomes more painful.

So, when sluggardly desires approach, in all their seeming loveliness, the wise anchor their desires somewhere sturdier than the short-term pleasures of sleep, food, or entertainment. They listen instead to the Lord Jesus; they consider the counsels of his Spirit and his promises of strength. Then, with a hearty, “Get behind me, sluggard!” they get up and do their work.

4. Hard work flows from the heart.

The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly. (Proverbs 26:16)

Till now, our weapons against the sluggard have been fashioned mainly from common sense —and understandably so, given that the sluggard is “a man lacking sense” (Proverbs 24:30). But now we come to the heart of the matter, which is the matter of the heart.

When Proverbs tells us that the sluggard is “[wise] in his own eyes,” it places godly labor within the realm of wisdom, a realm where God reigns as Lord. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Proverbs 9:10). Why does the sluggard sleep in and arrive late? Why is he dominated by distraction and procrastination? Ultimately, because he does not have the wisdom that flows from the fear of the Lord.

“Laziness reveals a lack of allegiance; sluggishness shows not just a body but a heart asleep.”

God does not occupy a significant place in the sluggard’s frame of reference — not nearly so significant a place as the cupboard and the couch. The wise, by contrast, remember that “a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord” (Proverbs 5:21), and they love to have it so. God fills their outlook as blue fills a cloudless sky; he is their beginning and their end, the alpha of their mornings and the omega of their evenings, the one in whom they live and move and labor. He is the God who, in Christ, sanctified our labors in human flesh and now fills us with his hardworking Spirit.

So, when the wise feel themselves drifting toward the sluggard, they know that hard work is far more than a matter of common sense and self-control. Laziness reveals a lack of allegiance; sluggishness shows not just a body but a heart asleep. And therefore, they take up the dagger that cuts a deeper wound in the sluggard’s heart: “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).

In Christ, whatever we do holds spiritual significance, from secret prayer to rising at our alarm, from fellowship to doubling down on our work. We live and labor before the eyes of our good Lord Jesus. His kingdom calls us. His Spirit fills us. His promises empower us. And his strength compels us to daily lay the sluggard to rest.

“Not feeling like it.” In the daily pursuit of Christ, I fear no phrase has hindered me more.

A few moments’ reflection reminds me of the silliness of such a feelings-based spirituality. A farmer will find nothing at harvest if he sets aside his plow with a wave of “not feeling like it.” A pianist will end her performances embarrassed if she takes a “not feeling like it” attitude to her practices. A couple will greet their anniversary with an unromantic sigh if they allow “not feeling like it” to govern their marriage.

Yet how often have I sidestepped habits of grace with a subtle, unspoken “not feeling like it” — and have expected to somehow still mature in faith and love and feel the spontaneous joy of the Spirit?

Any number of reasons stand ready to endorse the lazy slouch. “I don’t want to be a hypocrite.” “I have so much to do today anyway.” “I’ll get more from Scripture when I feel like reading it.” And perhaps the most common: “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, today’s spiritual potential — today’s comfort, joy, power, life — disappears on the winds of whim.

Reclaiming Routine

To some, the word routine carries the stiffness of stale bread and the rot of dead plants, the stuffiness of library books never opened and attics dusty with age. The very thought of routine spirituality — planned, scheduled, disciplined — seems to undermine the ministry of the life-giving, freedom-bestowing Spirit. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17) — and where the spirit of routine is (we may think), there is bondage.

The dichotomy, however, is self-imposed, self-imagined. If routine smells stale to us, the problem lies in our own sniffer. No doubt, routine can be made stale and dead, as any flower can be trampled underfoot or any sky cloaked with smog. But routine itself remains good, the friend of freedom and joy.

We might call any number of witnesses to testify on behalf of routine: Daniel, who “got down on his knees” and prayed “three times a day” (Daniel 6:10), whether lions waited or not; Peter and John, who went to the temple “at the hour of prayer” even after Pentecost brought the Spirit (Acts 3:1); or our Lord Jesus himself, who spontaneously defeated the devil’s lies, after fasting for forty days, because he had routinely memorized Deuteronomy (Matthew 4:1–10).

But perhaps the most striking ode to routine appears in Psalm 119.

Routines Like Riverbeds

None who read Psalm 119 would diagnose its author as dry; none who take up his psalm can sing it in hushed tones. The man sounds as alive as a spring sparrow, as exuberant as the exclamations in so many of his sentences. He isn’t always joyful, but oh, how he feels, freely and spontaneously. The whole psalm is a living pulse.

“Blessed are you, O Lord!” he shouts (verse 12). His soul, like his song, “is consumed with longing for your rules at all times” (verse 20). Both midnight and early morning may find him awake (verses 62, 147), too ecstatic to sleep, for “your testimonies are my delight” (verse 24). His hates and his loves burn too bright to be hidden (verses 104, 119).

“Under God, routines carve riverbeds in the soul where the streams of spontaneous love run deep.”

We might imagine such spontaneous affection lives beyond our reach, the possession of a super-spiritual personality. Pay attention to the psalm, however, and you may notice something that rivals the intensity of his feelings: the consistency of his routine. Scripture poured out of the man’s heart only because he had previously, even fastidiously, “stored” it there (verse 11). “I set your rules before me” was the watchword of his life, no matter the day (verse 30). With a devotion that might make us uncomfortable, he declares, “Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules” (verse 164).

Disciplined memorization, daily meditation, planned prayer and praise — under God, such routines carve riverbeds in the soul where the streams of spontaneous love run deep. They raise windmills in the heart to catch the breezes of the Spirit. Routines cannot give life of themselves, but they do invite life with all the readiness of a field furrowed, planted, and waiting for the rain.

String and Tune

Psalm 119 (and the rest of God’s word) gives us a robust category for spontaneous spirituality, for prayer and praise that fill the nets of ordinary moments and threaten to sink us for joy. But we have little hope of experiencing spontaneous devotion apart from the unspectacular business of routine. Daily we let down our nets; daily we take them up again; daily we wait for Jesus to bring the catch.

As we consider what routines might serve spontaneity best, we might helpfully think in two broad patterns: morning devotions and midday retreats. If morning devotions string our guitars, midday retreats retune them. If morning devotions inflate our hearts toward heaven, midday retreats give the bump that keeps us skyward. If morning devotions plant a flag for Christ on the hill of dawn, midday retreats beat off the afternoon foes ascending the slopes.

Morning Devotions

In all likelihood, we learned morning devotions as part of Discipleship 101. Repent, believe, and read your Bible every morning. But for that very reason, we can forget just how powerful and formative this pattern of seeking God can be.

There is a reason the psalmists prayed “in the morning” (Psalm 5:3), and sought deep satisfaction “in the morning” (Psalm 90:14), and declared God’s steadfast love “in the morning” (Psalm 92:2). There is a reason, too, we read of Jesus “rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark,” to commune with his Father (Mark 1:35). The morning’s first thoughts and words may not set an iron trajectory for the rest of the day, but a trajectory they do indeed set.

“We have little hope of experiencing spontaneous devotion apart from the unspectacular business of routine.”

Though we have new hearts in Christ, we do not always awake ready to live new. Our old man awakes with us, clinging close; Vanity Fair opens early; the devil waits, winking. Apart from some kind of Godward morning routine, then, we are likely to express throughout the day not spontaneous praise, but spontaneous pride; not spontaneous gratitude, but spontaneous grumbling. And so, in the morning, the wise want the first voice they hear to be God’s. They want the first words they speak to be prayer.

We will not always leave our morning devotions deeply moved. But if done prayerfully and earnestly, consistently and expectantly, then our devotions will set a tone for the hours ahead. We will walk into our day with guitar stringed, more ready to play a song of praise.

Midday Retreats

As valuable as morning devotions can be, however, souls like ours often need more to maintain a lively, spontaneous communion with God throughout the day. As the hours pass by, our strings lose their tune; our hearts drop altitude; our flags wave opposed. So, God gives us another pattern to live by:

These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6–9)

We are too weak, too forgetful, to live by morning devotions alone. As we walk through the day, we need promises wrapped round our wrists like watches. We need to wear truth like eyeglasses. We need a world adorned with the words of God.

Signs, frontlets, doorposts — such words sanction our creativity. They invite us, for example, to sanctify space, writing God’s words on mirrors and walls, car dashboards and desks. Some might replace their phone’s screen saver with a promise from the morning’s reading; others might write down a verse and slip it in their pocket. A friend in college, taking Deuteronomy 6:8 literally, sometimes drew the armor of God on his hands, a vivid reminder of the day’s spiritual warfare.

These words also invite us to sanctify time. Many would find help from retreating once or twice a day, even for a few minutes, to find a silent spot, hear again God’s words, and cast the day’s accumulated burdens on him. We might also benefit from simply pausing briefly before meetings or new tasks to settle our souls in Christ.

Finally, these words invite us to sanctify conversation. “You . . . shall talk of them,” God says — and not just in some places occasionally, but everywhere often. God means for his words to infiltrate our small talk and passing comments, our summaries of the day and our pillow-time reflections. Such conversations might start with a simple “What did you read today?” to spouse or roommate or friend.

However they come, midday retreats offer a pause and parenthesis in the day’s chaos, an oasis in the wilderness of tasks and temptations, a small Sabbath in the middle of packed afternoons, retuning our hearts to the morning’s song.

Revived and Rejoicing

The next time “not feeling like it” threatens to derail a good routine, we might confront our feelings with the words of David:

The law of the Lord is perfect,     reviving the soul; . . .the precepts of the Lord are right,     rejoicing the heart. (Psalm 19:7–8)

God’s word revives the soul and rejoices the heart — which suggests we will sometimes come to God’s word with souls asleep and hearts unfeeling. We will sit before an open Bible not wanting to read or pray, perhaps wanting to do anything else instead. And right there, in the midst of a difficult routine, God may revive our drooping feelings with a word.

When we allow “not feeling like it” to keep us from routine, we are like a man who avoids medicine because he doesn’t feel healthy, or who avoids fire because he doesn’t feel warm, or who avoids food because he doesn’t feel full. But when we engage in routine anyway — prayerfully and expectantly — we may walk away revived and rejoicing, our souls alive with spontaneous praise, “not feeling like it” nowhere to be found.

Once upon a time, you loved to write. Maybe as a child you spent hours in your room, scribbling imaginative stories. Or maybe you picked up poetry in high school. Or maybe during college you took refuge in a private journal, your prayers and outpoured hopes finding their home on paper.

But then somewhere along the way, the joy faded. Maybe you’re an undergrad, and though college seemed to promise a writers’ Eden, academic essays have left you feeling exiled somewhere east. Or maybe the joy left through a different door. Either way, you have lost some of your pleasure in pen and keyboard — and you long to have it back. Whether you write for an audience (letters, articles, sermons) or simply for yourself (journal entries, poems, prayers), you want to say once again, with Eric Liddell-like joy, “God made me to write — and when I write, I feel his pleasure.”

So, when your delight has faded, and your fingers seem to have lost their skill, how might you rediscover the joy of writing? As one who has rediscovered such joy several times over, I offer six suggestions.

1. See the seasons.

“For everything there is a season,” the Preacher tells us (Ecclesiastes 3:1). And everything includes the rhythms of the writing life. We might wish writing were like San Diego, sunny and seventies all year round — but writing is far more like my Minnesota home, with its brilliant summers and barren winters.

If you write regularly for long, you likely will discover that seasons are a normal part of the writing life. Unlike our Lord, who “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), we who write are fickle and changeable creatures. We pass through seasons.

In some seasons, the words come quickly and joyously; your fingers can’t keep up with your cascading thoughts. Daily, even sometimes hourly, ideas pop into your head that make you want to sit down and lose yourself on paper. But in other seasons, you stare desolately at a blank word-processing screen, that obnoxious little cursor blinking failure in your face. Or you finish writing something, read it over, and wonder how such a grand idea could wear such tattered words.

“If in your writing you aim to be the best, or to be better than so-and-so, your joy likely will die and stay dead.”

Getting some extended experience with writing helps in this regard. I am still somewhat young in my writing, but I’ve been hitting keys for long enough that I don’t get as discouraged when I pass through a writing winter. The cold used to blow right into my authorial bones. When writing turned from a joy to a struggle, when it felt like I had to fight for every word, I wondered whether this was simply my new reality. I might as well hang up my keyboard and find a better use for my time.

But time and again, the season passed. Winter branches budded once more. And so now, when cold seasons come, I learn to treat them like a Midwestern January: not as a reason to give up, but as a trial to endure in hope.

The seasons of writing, however, are in one respect quite different from normal seasons. Whereas a normal winter will pass if only you wait long enough, a writing winter usually requires something more: not only that we wait, but that we keep writing while we wait. Which brings us to our second lesson.

2. Embrace routine.

Let’s switch the image now from seasons to agriculture. C.S. Lewis, in his Reflections on the Psalms, addresses the familiar scenario in the Christian life when you come to your time of Bible reading, prayer, or Sunday worship, and you find more duty than delight in your heart. We may feel tempted in such moments to forsake duty altogether as we wait for a more willing spirit, but Lewis differs: “When we carry out our ‘religious duties,’” he writes, “we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order that when at last the water comes, it may find them ready” (97).

When by faith you go ahead and read, pray, or gather with God’s people, even when you meet great resistance within, you are like a farmer digging channels and waiting for water. You cannot make the water come, but you can dig and pray and wait on God (Galatians 6:9). And a similar dynamic holds true in the writing life.

It would be hard to overstress the importance of discipline, habit, and routine in writing, and especially during the driest seasons. We may need to take breaks, or experiment with different kinds of writing (more on that later), but trying to rediscover joy in writing without writing is like trying to rediscover joy in God without Bible reading or prayer.

You will find this advice from authors all over the place if you pay attention, even from those authors for whom we might assume writing comes naturally all the time. One of my favorite riffs on this theme comes from the short-story writer Flannery O’Connor:

I’m a full-time believer in writing habits, pedestrian as it all may sound. . . . I write only about two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place. This doesn’t mean I produce much out of the two hours. Sometimes I work for months and have to throw everything away, but I don’t think any of that was time wasted. Something goes on that makes it easier when it does come well. And the fact is if you don’t sit there every day, the day it would come well, you won’t be sitting there. (The Habit of Being, 242)

Like O’Connor, the best writers typically discover and rediscover their creativity within the tight bounds of routine. So, even if current struggles allow only for a brief routine, dig a little every day, or every other day, or whatever the right pace might be, and wait for God to bring the rain.

3. Kill ungodly comparison.

Sometimes, as we’ve seen, we lose joy in writing simply because the season has changed. We find ourselves in a writing winter whose coming we had no more control over than a cold front. Other times, however, we lose joy because we ourselves have allowed something to steal it. And among those somethings, one of the more common is ungodly comparison.

I say ungodly comparison because comparison can indeed be put to good use. We do well to read others’ writing, celebrate where they excel, and seek to learn what we can. But there’s another kind of comparison, a devilish kind, where we cannot rest satisfied unless we see ourselves as better than the others in view.

In an email newsletter from a few years ago, the writer Jonathan Rogers contrasted two events that took place on the same weekend in his city of Nashville: the NFL draft and a running marathon. Both events took competition seriously, yet they did so in strikingly different ways.

In the draft, the players competed according to a hierarchical orientation, an orientation highly attuned to who gets drafted first, second, third, in what round and in what order. You can be an all-star athlete and yet leave the draft feeling insecure because you were chosen second rather than first. In the marathon, however, most of the runners competed according to a territorial orientation: they ran not against the other runners, but against their own personal resistance. A few ran for first place, to be sure, but most ran for a personal record, or just to finish.

Healthy writing, Rogers writes, is far more like a marathon than a draft; it has a territorial, not a hierarchical, orientation:

If you’re a writer, forget about your place in the hierarchy. . . . What you have is a territory — a little patch of ground that is yours to cultivate. Your patch of ground is your unique combination of experiences and perspective and voice and loves and longings and community. Tend that patch of ground. Work hard. Be disciplined. Get better. Your patch of ground and your community are worth it.

If in your writing you aim to be the best, or to be better than so-and-so — a temptation common to man — your joy likely will die and stay dead. But if you see yourself as someone with a certain territory, a unique set of experiences and perspectives and gifts, then you won’t worry as much when others excel you. Of course they will. Instead, you will devote yourself to your little patch of ground for the benefit of the people around you and the glory of God.

Or to use a Pauline image, you and other writers are less like competitors and more like members of a body. If you are an eye, be the very best eye you can be; write in a way that only an eye like you can. And then resist wondering whether you as an eye write better than the hand over there. Let the hand do its handish things, while you do your eyeish things, and give thanks for each other.

4. Word-craft wherever you can.

Somewhere along the way, many of us pick up the idea that academic or professional writing equals boring writing. Maybe that’s how you lost your joy in writing in the first place: you used to write short stories, and now you write essays in MLA style, or project reports that follow a template. So, even if you find the content of your writing interesting, perhaps even worshipful, the style feels technical and sterile.

In her book Stylish Academic Writing, Helen Sword discusses the gap between what most writing books advise and what most academic and professional writing looks like. She lists the various writing virtues you would find in the best style books, like using clear, precise language; engaging readers’ attention through examples; avoiding opaque jargon; and favoring active verbs and concrete nouns. Then she writes,

Pick up a peer-reviewed journal in just about any academic discipline and what will you find? Impersonal, stodgy, jargon-laden, abstract prose that ignores or defies most of the stylistic principles outlined above. There is a massive gap between what most readers consider to be good writing and what academics typically produce and publish. (3)

And I would add, speaking from my own experience, the same holds true for what academic students and young professionals typically produce and publish.

But believe it or not, you will find no rule that says you cannot include interesting vocabulary or arresting turns of phrase just because your writing is going to get a grade on it or be tucked away in a corporate file cabinet. So, why not treat your academic or professional assignments — or for that matter, your emails and text messages — as opportunities to grow in word craft? Why not throw in a metaphor or trade a to-be verb for something vivid and surprising? You might find yourself enjoying the writing process more, and I can guarantee your professor or boss will enjoy reading it more.

So, “whatever you do, work heartily” (Colossians 3:23). And whatever you write, write creatively.

5. Begin where you are.

Back to Lewis. In his book Letters to Malcolm, he offers a helpful principle for prayer that applies also to writing. Instead of feeling pressure to begin every prayer time “by summoning up what we believe about the goodness and greatness of God, by thinking about creation and redemption and ‘all the blessings of this life’” (88), consider starting smaller, Lewis says, even right where you are: thank him for the crescent moon outside your window, the gift of coming sleep, the wife whose hand you hold. Because, Lewis writes, we “shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest” (91). So, we begin where we are.

“Often, the joy we want to rediscover in writing comes from what we see while we write.”

We can apply this principle to writing in at least two ways. First, if you have lost your joy for the kind of writing your classes or job demand of you, carve out at least a little time for the writing that sparks your joy — whether haikus, or Lord of the Rings fan fiction, or handwritten letters, or comic books, or whatever else. And even better, find some people who like the same stuff so you can write and revise together. In other words, build up joy by returning to the writing that more readily brings you joy.

Second, if the joy seems to have drained from writing altogether, if you struggle to find delight in the act of writing at all, at least write about something you find delightful. Write about a friend you thank God for, or a passage in Scripture that stirred you, or something wonderful and surprising in the world God made. Some months ago, I was wading with my wife and sons in the Mississippi River, and we noticed around our feet dozens of snails making their way along the riverbed, their trails crisscrossing like interstate junctions. Write about that kind of ordinary glory. You might not find joy writing about biology or Jane Austen or the latest quarterly revenues, but you might find some joy writing about snails.

The sons of Korah sing in Psalm 45:1, “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.” Our words rarely flow more readily than when they come from the overflow of the heart. So, what is your heart overflowing with right now? Begin there. Write about it.

6. Write to see.

Often, the joy we want to rediscover in writing comes from what we see while we write. Under God’s providence, our own words can pave the path that leads us back to joy; our sentences can become the window that shows us more of God’s glory in Christ. And so, as John Piper has said, write not only to say beauty, but to see beauty.

Paul’s soaring doxology in Romans 11:33–36, for example, is no mere calculated literary device. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” This is the language of affectionate, spontaneous praise. And the praise came, in part, from writing Romans 1:1–11:32. Through his writing, Paul felt more reason to praise God than he did before he wrote.

And to that end, consider one final suggestion. In one section of Helmut Thielicke’s book A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, he talks about the importance of what he calls “the atmosphere of the second person” in theological writing and thought. After referencing the fact that Anselm begins his discourse on God’s existence with a prayer, Thielicke writes,

A theological thought can breathe only in the atmosphere of dialogue with God. . . . The weal and woe even of theological thought depends decisively upon the atmosphere of the “second person” and upon the fact that essentially dogmatic theology is a theology which is prayed. (64, 67)

The deepest joy in writing, whether theological or not, depends on whether our writing happens in “the atmosphere of the second person” — that is, in the presence of God. So, I exhort myself here along with you: before you write, and as you write, and after you write, speak to the God in whose presence you write. Venture outside the realm of the third person, where we speak about God and his world, and enter the realm of the second person, where we speak to God himself. Write with God not only as a he, but as a you.

When our writing becomes an exercise in relying on God, praising God, and telling forth God’s excellencies in Christ, then we have good reason to believe we will discover and then rediscover joy in writing, however far away it feels right now.

In a day like ours, you could scarcely ruffle more feathers than by suggesting that women should be quiet. To many, the words squeal and crunch like a car wreck. They caw like birds from some barbarous past. Many would prefer the sound of a foghorn at close range.

The recoiling isn’t entirely unjustified. In many places and times, quietness has been forced upon women unkindly, undeservedly, indefensibly. Women, who share the sex of lady Wisdom herself (Proverbs 9:1–6), have often had their words muffled, their intelligence hushed, their needed counsel dismissed. The world has known (and still knows) many Nabal-like men, who live foolishly beside an Abigail unheard.

Yet at some point, even in a day like ours, we find ourselves confronted with the words of Peter and Paul:

Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. (1 Peter 3:4)

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. (1 Timothy 2:11)

I write, of course, as a man — a fact perhaps frustrating to some. But I write as a man who has spied glimmers of this hidden beauty and has understood in such moments why God calls it “very precious.” I find myself falling quiet before this heavenly hush, this imperishable calm. I am, in short, an admirer of quietness, hoping with a few words to win more.

Consider with me, then, the endangered virtue of womanly quietness.

Quietness Reconsidered

Explore the Bible’s teaching on quietness, and you may notice some surprising features.

You may notice, first, that despite female-specific applications in 1 Peter 3 and 1 Timothy 2, God commands and commends quietness for both sexes. In the Old Testament, for example, we read of the mighty David calming and quieting his heart (Psalm 131:2), of sages urging quietness as the way of wisdom (Proverbs 29:11; Ecclesiastes 4:6; 9:17), and of God’s whole people clothed with quiet strength (Isaiah 30:15).

The apostles likewise lay quietness on both men and women. “Aspire to live quietly,” Paul tells the Thessalonians; he later exhorts the idlers in the church “to do their work quietly” (1 Thessalonians 4:11; 2 Thessalonians 3:12). And then, a few sentences before his command that women “learn quietly,” Paul offers the following reason to pray for the powerful: “that we [men and women] may lead a peaceful and quiet life” (1 Timothy 2:2). As with submission, both men and women are called to be quiet, even if the call takes different shapes.

And then, second, you may notice that the adjectives adorning quietness in Scripture differ greatly from those our society might use. Ask many today to list words they associate with quietness (especially female quietness), and you get the impression of gray aprons and baggy blouses: weak, passive, inert, insignificant, marginalized, oppressed. But when you consider Scripture’s own associations, you find a different dress indeed:

fearless (1 Peter 3:6)
hopeful (1 Peter 3:5)
peaceful (Isaiah 32:17–18)
precious (1 Peter 3:4)
imperishable (1 Peter 3:4)
strong (Isaiah 30:15)
content (Ecclesiastes 4:6)

“Quietness is not first about the mouth but about the heart.”

In the hush of a growing garden, some may hear only the sound of aching silence, while others hear the pulsing of quiet life. Which brings us to a third observation, less obvious than the first two but just as crucial: quietness is not first about the mouth but about the heart.

Calm and Quiet Heart

No doubt, when Peter and Paul called women to learn quietly and adorn themselves with a quiet spirit, they had the mouth in mind. Paul expounds “learn quietly” with the words, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Timothy 2:12). And Peter describes a quiet woman as winning an unbelieving husband “without a word” (1 Peter 3:1). So, quietness certainly has implications for speech: in some situations — under the preaching of the word, in wise submission to a husband — quietness will lead a woman to speak little or not at all.

Yet quietness goes deeper than decibels — far deeper. In 1 Timothy 2:2, Paul’s “peaceful and quiet life” means not a silent life, but a life calm and well-ordered, “godly and dignified,” a life that advances God’s kingdom without clamor. Peter likewise speaks of “the hidden person of the heart” and a “quiet spirit” — the inner outfit of a woman who hopes in God and fears him only (1 Peter 3:4–6). Quietness concerns a woman’s spirit more than it concerns her speech.

In the scriptural background, Isaiah describes quietness as the sound of a soul returning and resting in God (Isaiah 30:15), while Zephaniah attaches it to a heart hushed beneath God’s song of love (Zephaniah 3:17). And then, in Proverbs, we catch the nature of quietness by contrast, as we listen to the voice of a woman decidedly unquiet: woman Folly.

Loud and Wayward

When Solomon tells us woman Folly “is loud and wayward” (Proverbs 7:11), he’s showing us a woman not merely brash in mouth, but disordered, rebellious, and unsubmissive in heart — hence why the NIV renders loud as “unruly.” Her noisy tongue wags from her noisy spirit; her shouting words offer the transcription of her shouting soul. Close her mouth, and woman Folly remains loud.

By contrast, we hear quietness in the figure of lady Wisdom — despite the fact that she speaks, and sometimes loudly (Proverbs 1:20–21; 9:1–6). For her words, measured and wise, are so many streams flowing from a heart that fears the Lord (Proverbs 9:10). She speaks “noble things,” for her heart is noble; she utters “what is right,” for her soul is right with God (Proverbs 8:6). Even as she opens her mouth, she remains quiet.

We might describe quietness, then, as the atmosphere of a heart at peace with God and its place in his world. Calm and well-ordered, a quiet woman hopes in God and knows herself cared for by him. And then, from that place of spiritual strength and repose, she decides when to remain silent and when to speak.

Her actual volume will be shaped, in part, by her personality and culture (and not wrongly). But whoever she is and wherever she lives, a quiet woman seeks to adorn her words with the same gentle glory that clothes her hidden heart. From a meek and quiet spirit, she breathes out Godward beauty.

Loudest Kind of Quiet

Lady Wisdom has many quiet daughters throughout the biblical storyline, “holy women who hoped in God” (1 Peter 3:5) and who silenced sin and Satan through the beauty of a quiet life. Peter points us to Sarah, whose quiet submission to Abraham made her the mother of many nations (1 Peter 3:6). Alongside her, we might mention Ruth and Hannah, Abigail and Esther, Elizabeth and Mary, among others — women whose quietness spoke a louder word than the voice of woman Folly.

Study such women, and you will not come away with a sense of sniveling inferiority, as if they were any less mighty than the men beside them. Ruth joined meekness with a bold request to Boaz — and became David’s great-grandmother as a result. Hannah mixed quiet love for Elkanah with a mighty life of prayer — and under God, her secret words shook the world.

Abigail, tactful and reserved toward a most unworthy man, quietly rescued his life and won a name among the wise. And then, of course, we dare not forget how our Lord entered the world through a woman who answered the angel with a quietness more commendable than Zechariah’s: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

“A quiet life under God is itself a weapon, a danger, a threat to the kingdom of darkness.”

Such women suffice to show that quietness does not mean standing on the sidelines of life, walking through the world without making a whisper of difference. It means, rather, refusing to believe that the noise of self-assertion is the best way to get God’s work done. It means trusting that a quiet life under God is itself a weapon, a danger, a threat to the kingdom of darkness ever blaring with the uproar of sin.

Her Hidden Beauty

Perhaps till now we have heard the word quietness and thought only in negative terms: Quietness means not speaking, not teaching. Quietness is absence and hollowness, a vacuum and a hole. The apostle Peter could hardly have described quietness more differently: far from an empty nothing, quietness is an adorning: “Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:4).

When we hear quietness, we ought to imagine not the absence of speech, but the presence of calm and peace, of fearless hope and endless beauty. And we ought to dress quietness in the brightest, most wonderful colors we have, for though hidden from our sight, the heart of a quiet woman holds the attention of heaven. The only voice that ultimately matters calls quietness “very precious,” imperishably beautiful.

And when one day God cuts the volume from this noisy and clamorous world, the quiet woman will remain, her beauty no longer hidden.

Somewhere near the beginning of my Christian life, I started associating sleeplessness with godliness. And for understandable reasons.

The sluggard of Proverbs has long lived as a vivid character in my imagination — that buffoon who flops on his bed “as a door turns on its hinges” (Proverbs 26:14), who answers his mother’s fourth knock with a mumble: “A little sleep, a little slumber . . .” (Proverbs 6:10). Then, positively, I read of psalmists who prayed at midnight and woke before dawn (Psalm 119:62, 147) — and of a Savior who rose “very early” (Mark 1:35) and sometimes passed the night without a wink (Luke 6:12).

Stories from church history also cast a shadow over my bed. I read with wonder how Hudson Taylor sometimes rose at 2:00am to read and pray until 4:00am (Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, 243). George Whitefield, too, was known to begin his day well before dawn, sometimes finishing both his devotions and his first sermon by 6:00am (George Whitefield: God’s Anointed Servant, 196). And didn’t the Puritans get just a few hours of sleep a night? The post-Puritan William Law seemed to capture the spirit of the godliest saints when he spoke of “renouncing sleep” to redeem the time (When I Don’t Desire God, 160).

Under such influences, I tried many times to carve off minutes and sometimes hours from my nightly routine, attempting to find the smallest amount of sleep I could get without losing essential functions. I greeted many midnights and dark mornings. I experimented with elaborate alarm clocks. I traded my pillow for cups of coffee.

And all the while, I did not always take seriously all that God says about sleep. I did not realize that “sometimes,” as D.A. Carson puts it, “the godliest thing you can do in the universe is get a good night’s sleep” (Scandalous, 147).

Sleeping Saints

For all the biblical passages that hallow sleeplessness, perhaps just as many sanctify sleep. In Proverbs, the same father who warns his son about the dangers of “a little sleep” also assures him that wisdom gives good rest (Proverbs 3:24). Alongside the psalmists who praise God at midnight are others who praise him in the morning after a sound night of slumber (Psalm 3:5).

And in the Gospels, one of the more remarkable images of our Savior is of him in a storm-tossed, wave-battered boat, “asleep on the cushion” (Mark 4:37–38). He could stay up all night when needed, but he was not above taking a nap the next day.

“For those prone to productive self-reliance, the bed is a desk in God’s school of humility.”

Perhaps the most striking endorsement of sleep, however, comes from the simple fact that God made us this way. Scripture gives no indication that our need for nightly rest began in Genesis 3. And in fact, before the fruit was taken from the tree, before the weariness of sin weighed down the world, Adam slept (Genesis 2:21). Sleep, it seems, is no fallen necessity, nor merely a fleshly temptation, but a divine gift. Both then and now, God “gives to his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2).

And therefore, though occasions come when we must renounce sleep for the sake of something greater, Scripture gives us a more positive default posture: in Christ, God teaches us to redeem sleep. He brings our beds back to Eden, where we learn to receive sleep as healer, teacher, giver, and servant.

Sleep as Healer

On nights when sleep seems like a great interruption, like an eight-hour paralysis on our plans, we may find help from imagining our beds as a balm for mind, body, and soul. For by God’s design, sleep halts us to heal us.

Until recently, sleep’s God-given powers of healing were a matter more of intuition than of empirical reality. But sleep scientists can now write volumes about the benefits of adequate rest for the brain and the body. Matthew Walker, director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, goes so far as to say, “Sleep is the universal health care provider: whatever the physical or mental ailment, sleep has a prescription it can dispense” (Why We Sleep, 108). While we lie unconscious, sleep solidifies our memories and nourishes our creativity; it boosts our energy and staves off sickness.

Which also means that sleep plays a modest but notable role in our spiritual health. As exercise can keep our bodies fit for service, and as nutrition can energize us for good works, so a healthy pattern of sleep can assist our love for God and neighbor — keeping us awake and alert for meditation and prayer, readying us to spend and be spent for others. More than that, good rest also guards us from sins that our sleep-deprived selves might indulge more easily: irritability and impatience, bitterness and lust, cynicism and grumbling.

When the miserable Elijah asked God to take his life, God’s remedy for the prophet’s despondency was first sleep, then food, then more sleep — and then finally words (1 Kings 19:4–6). John Piper, having learned Elijah’s lesson, mentions how he becomes “emotionally less resilient” on little sleep. Therefore, he writes, “For me, adequate sleep is not just a matter of staying healthy. It’s a matter of staying in the ministry — I’m tempted to say it’s a matter of persevering as a Christian” (When I Don’t Desire God, 205).

Nightly, the God who knit these brains and bodies stands beside our beds, ready to retie the day’s loose ends, patch our holes, and wake us up repaired, freshly ready to hear and respond to his words of life.

Sleep as Teacher

As sleep heals, it also teaches. And in a world preoccupied with productivity, sleep teaches lessons we might scarcely learn elsewhere: God, not we, upholds our life (Psalm 121:3–4); his initiative and action, not ours, decisively builds our homes and watches over our cities (Psalm 127:1–2). For those prone to productive self-reliance, the bed is a desk in God’s school of humility.

Like Israel’s weekly Sabbath, nighttime bids us to lay down our to-do lists and cease our striving, reminding us that God can keep our lives running while we lie unproductive. And like Israel’s Sabbath, the lesson is hard learned and easily forgotten. Many of us receive God’s rest reluctantly, even unwillingly, like people searching for manna on the seventh day (Exodus 16:27). Yet the teacher sleep returns again, each night repeating its lesson.

As if to reinforce the point, God tells us stories where he works wonders during our deepest slumber. In Eden, Adam falls asleep a bachelor and wakes to find a bride (Genesis 2:21–23). Later, a similar “deep sleep” falls on Abram, and in the darkness, God makes great and solemn promises, and seals his gracious covenant (Genesis 15:12–21). And then still later, as the disciples’ heavy lids close on their Savior’s anguish, Jesus wrestles and prays and wins the victory in Gethsemane alone (Mark 14:40–42).

To be sure, we ought not presume that God will fix our shoddy work while we sleep. In all likelihood, the weeds the sluggard should have pulled today will still be there tomorrow, a little taller for his negligence. But for those who are tempted to eat “the bread of anxious toil” (Psalm 127:2), these images of God’s tireless care, his sleepless provision, powerfully remind us that he can do far more in our sleeping than we can do in our waking.

Sleep as Giver

Of course, we may acknowledge sleep as healer and teacher yet still find ourselves lying down begrudgingly. Medicine and lessons may be necessary, but necessity rarely makes patients and pupils rejoice. Scripture, however, speaks of sleep not only as needed, but also, for God’s people, as “sweet” (Proverbs 3:24; Jeremiah 31:26).

Like food, sleep falls among those good gifts “to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (1 Timothy 4:3); it is one part of the “everything” that God “richly provides” for our enjoyment (1 Timothy 6:17). And therefore, we sleep Christianly when we not only humble ourselves to get the sleep we need, but also when, as Adrian Reynolds puts it, we “wake up after a good night, stretch and cry out, ‘Thank you, Lord, for the good gift of sleep’” (And So to Bed, 38). Sleep is a generous gift from a generous God.

Beyond bodily refreshment, however, God invites us to experience sleep as gift on a far deeper level. We catch a glimpse in Psalm 31:5, a common bedtime prayer in Jesus’s day: “Into your hand I commit my spirit.” At night, God gives us the privilege of giving to him our very selves, including all the cares that feel so vexing and troubling, so discouraging and distracting. There at our bedside he takes them — takes us — and safely keeps us while we sleep. And there is no sweeter place to sleep than in the sovereign hands of God.

“God can do far more in our sleeping than we can do in our waking.”

Jesus, who would pray Psalm 31:5 before his great and final sleep, enjoyed this gift every day during his three decades on earth. How else could he sleep through the storm? How else could he rest while surrounded by so much need, while threatened by so many foes? Only because he nightly handed his spirit into his Father’s care, and received from his Father a peace that surpassed the biggest troubles of today and tomorrow.

Sleep as Servant

Sleep as healer, sleep as teacher, sleep as giver — these three give us abundant reason to actively seek a good night’s rest. In light of them, many of us may need to acknowledge how much sleep we really need and to consider some basic tips for falling asleep and staying asleep, especially in our caffeinated, sedentary, digital world.

But the aim of Christian sleep goes further still. As followers of the Savior who sacrificed his sleep for us, we do not pursue a good night’s rest at all costs. We do not take this healer, teacher, giver and set it up also as master. Rather, we receive sleep with a soul that stands ready, at all times, to forsake sleep when love calls.

Perhaps a friend in need asks for a late-night phone call, or a small-group member needs an early-morning ride to the airport. Perhaps a child cries from down the hall, or a spouse just needs to talk. Perhaps hospitality ran late, or some crucial decision requires a midnight consultation with our Lord. Either way, in the face of such needs, we kindly thank sleep for its services and then dismiss it as the servant God made it to be.

When we leave our beds to walk in love, we do not leave our God. His help is stronger than sleep’s healing, his wisdom deeper than sleep’s teaching, his generosity greater than sleep’s giving. He can sustain us in our sleeplessness and, in his good time, give again to his beloved sleep.

Ever since Eden, God has given children a crucial role in the coming of his kingdom. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring,” God told the serpent (Genesis 3:15). And so, ever since Eden, there has also been a long and desperate war on children.

The biblical story shows us just how ruthless this world’s anti-child forces can become: Pharaoh casting Israel’s sons in the Nile (Exodus 1:22). Demonic “gods” bidding parents to pass their children through fire (Jeremiah 19:4–5). Herod slaughtering Bethlehem’s boys (Matthew 2:16).

Our own society is not above such bloodshed: more than sixty million invisible headstones (from the last fifty years, and still counting) fill America’s fields. Much of the modern West’s aversion to children appears, however, in subtler forms. Today, we are having fewer children than ever, later than ever. We diminish, and sometimes outright despise, stay-at-home motherhood. And too often, we treat children as mere accessories to our individualism: valuable insofar as they buttress our personal identity and further our personal goals — otherwise, inconvenient.

As Christians, we may be tempted to assume that this war on children exists only out there. But even when we turn from the world of secular individualism and carefully consider ourselves — our hearts, our homes, our churches — we may find strange inclinations against children. We may discover that anti-child forces can hide in the most seemingly pro-child places. And we may realize, as Jesus’s disciples once did, that children need a larger place in our lives.

Pro-Child on Paper

As with most Christians today, the disciples of Jesus grew up in a largely pro-child culture. Their views of children may not have been as sentimental as ours sometimes are, but they knew kids played a key role in God’s purposes. They remembered God’s promise to send a serpent-crushing son (Genesis 3:15). They regularly recited the command to teach God’s word “diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9). They cherished God’s faithfulness to a thousand generations (Exodus 34:7).

But then, one day, some actual children approach the disciples. And as Jesus watches how his men respond, he feels an emotion nowhere else attributed to him in the Gospels: indignation.

They were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant. (Mark 10:13–14)

The disciples likely had the best of intentions. To them, these children (or their parents) were acting inappropriately; they were coming at the wrong time or in the wrong way. Not now, children — the Master has business to attend to. They were about to discover, however, that far from distracting the Master from his business, children lay near the heart of the Master’s business.

In the process, they also warn us that claiming a pro-child position does not mean living a pro-child life. You can theoretically value children and practically neglect them. You can say on paper, “Let the children come,” while saying with your posture, “Let the children keep their distance.” You can look with disdain on the anti-child forces in the world and, meanwhile, overlook the precious children in your midst.

We, like the disciples, may hold pro-child positions. Our churches may have pro-child programs. But actually being pro-child requires far more than a position or a program: it requires the very heart and posture of Christ.

Heart of Christ for Children

“Jesus loved children with a grand and profound love,” Herman Bavinck writes (The Christian Family, 43). And do we? Answering that question may require a closer look at our Lord’s response when the little children came to him.

How might we become more like this Man who made his home among the children, this almighty Lord of the little ones? Among the various pro-child postures we see in Mark 10:13–16, consider three.

1. Presence

First, Jesus created a warm and welcoming presence for children.

Something in the demeanor of Jesus suggested that this Lord was not too large for little children. Young ones apparently hung around him with ease, such that he could spontaneously take a child “in his arms” while resting with his disciples in Capernaum (Mark 9:36). Later, as Jesus enters Jerusalem, children gladly follow him, shouting their hosannas (Matthew 21:15–16). And then in our scene, parents and children approach him apparently without hesitation (Mark 10:13).

“Something in the demeanor of Jesus suggested that this Lord was not too large for little children.”

What about Jesus communicated such an unthreatening welcome? We might note the times he helped and healed children, like the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:41–42) or the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:14–15). Yet these stories are also examples of a far larger pattern in Jesus’s ministry, which was noticeably bent toward those the world might consider “little”: lepers, demoniacs, tax collectors, prostitutes. He was not haughty, but associated with the lowly (Romans 12:16). And children, seeing this lover of lowliness, knew they were not too lowly for him.

If we too want to become a welcome presence for children, we might begin by bending ourselves toward lowliness in general. Upon entering our Sunday gatherings and small groups, and as we move through our cities, do we see the lost and lonely, the bruised and broken? Do we wrap gentleness around vulnerability and bestow honor on weakness? If so, children are likely to notice our humble, bent-down hearts, a presence low enough for them to reach.

2. Priority

Second, Jesus made children a practical priority, giving them generous amounts of his time and attention.

If anyone had good reason to shuffle past the children — “Sorry, kids, not now” — it was Jesus. No one had higher priorities or a loftier mission. No one’s time was more valuable. Yet no one gave his priorities or his time so patiently to those we might see as distractions. On his way to save the world, our Lord paused and “took [the children] in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them” (Mark 10:16). His life and ministry were full, but not too full for children.

In our own lives, prioritizing children calls for active planning, a willingness to devote portions of our schedule to play and pretend. But as Jesus shows us, prioritizing children also calls for responsive receiving, or what we might call living an interruptible life.

Children are master interrupters. Tugs on the jeans and cries from the crib, impulsive addresses and immodest stompings — kids have a way of ruining well-laid plans. The more like Jesus we become, however, the more readily we will embrace our ruined plans as part of God’s good plan. And we will remember that if Jesus could pause to linger with little children, then we too can pause our own important tasks, bend down on a knee, and give children the eye-level attention of Christ.

3. Prayer

Third, Jesus prayed and pursued children’s spiritual welfare.

When the children came to Jesus, he not only received them and held them; he not only looked at them and spoke to them. He also laid his hands on them and, in the presence of his Father, bestowed a benediction upon their little heads (Mark 10:16).

We don’t know how old the children were, but they were young enough to be brought by their parents (Mark 10:13). They were young enough, too, that the disciples apparently saw little spiritual potential in them. Not so with Jesus. The Lord who loves to the thousandth generation sees farther than we can: he can discern in a child’s face the future adult and budding disciple; he can plant seeds of prayer in fields that may not bear fruit for many years.

Do we invest such patient spiritual care in children? When we pray for our friends, do we bring their little ones, by name, before the throne of grace as well? Do we find creative ways not only to joke and play with the kids in our churches, but also to share Jesus with them in thoughtful, age-appropriate ways? And do our evangelistic efforts take into account the not-yet-believers walking knee-high among us?

Oh, that each of us, parents or not, would join the mothers and fathers in Mark 10, desperate to hand our children into the blessed arms of Christ. When we hear him say, “Let the children come,” may we respond, “We will bring them.”

Posture, Not Programs

If our treatment of children looks more like the disciples’ than our Lord’s, then our problem, at heart, is that we are not yet children at heart. “Let the children come to me,” he says, “for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:14–15). We have become too big; we have outgrown grace. For the doorway into the kingdom is small — so small that we can enter only if we kneel to the height of a little child.

To oppose the anti-child forces in this world, we need more than a pro-life position, a high view of motherhood, and a robust Sunday school program. All these we may have and more, and yet still become the objects of Jesus’s indignation.

We need a posture, a spirit, a kinship with the living Christ, who left the highest place for the lowest, who became a child so we might become children of God. The more we love Jesus, the more we will love children. The more like him we become, the more powerfully will our presence, our priorities, and our prayers say, “Let the children come to him” — and the more the children will come.