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Day 4 Get some sleep

If you were the president of the most powerful country in the world for 24 hours, what would you do? James Polk was President of the USA for four years and stood down from office at noon on Sunday, 4 March 1849. His successor, Zachary Taylor, was an extremely pious Christian and refused to be sworn in on a Sunday, so he did not begin his presidency until the next day. Under normal circumstances the vice-president would have held the office for the intervening period, but George Dallas had resigned the previous week. So, for one day only, the presidency was held by a man whose name has been long forgotten – the senior senator, David Rice Atchison. And why has his name not entered the history books? Because he was so exhausted from making arrangements for the inauguration that he arrived home in the early hours of the morning, went to bed, and slept through his entire day in office.

The reason I warm towards Senator Atchison is that when he talked about it afterwards he didn’t speak as if it were a wasted opportunity, but as the most sensible thing to do in the circumstances. We usually think about sleep as an absence of activity. It seems like a negative but necessary activity to recover from the positive but tiring events of the day. What would happen if, for a short while, we made sleep one of the priorities of our lives and built the rest of the day around it?

We have Jesus’ example to follow. Crowds kept him up late and woke him up early. He seems to have made a decision not to keep going until he was burnt out, but to stop whenever he knew he needed to. Mark’s Gospel tells us that at one point, after an exhausting time of teaching about the Kingdom of God, Jesus abandoned the crowd (that is the literal translation) and got in a boat ‘just as he was’. And so, either extremely exhausted or extremely confident, Jesus was able to sleep through a squall. When he was woken up by his disciples he was angry. I presume it was because they did not trust him to rescue them, but it is tempting to think that he was cross with them for rousing him from the depths of his sleep! Either way, it is interesting to see the contrast between Jesus’ reactions and those of his disciples. They saw the sea unsettled and assumed that the best response was to become as restless as nature was. But Jesus’ response was to put the storm to sleep, just as he had been. Both responses would have ended up with humans at one with nature, but Jesus’ actions lend great dignity to sleep as something God-given – a blessing of creation. Sleep isn’t laziness; it’s holiness!

Leaving the crowd behind, [Jesus’ disciples] took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’ He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ Mark 4.36–40

Of course, the Bible is not so affirming about sleep that it becomes an excuse for being indolent. The Proverbs of the Old Testament warn us that idleness is a route to ruin: ‘How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest – and poverty will come on you like a bandit’ (6.9–11). So how can we tell whether an extra hour or two in bed is a valuable part of a spiritual detox or just giving in to lethargy? Once again, Proverbs is helpful, because it encourages us to train ourselves to know our bodies and read the signs they give so that we can judge what they are telling us we need: ‘My son, preserve sound judgment and discernment, do not let them out of your sight; they will be life for you . . . when you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet’ (3.21–24).

In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for God grants sleep to those he loves. Psalm 127.2

The fact is that this generation is offered far more alternatives to going to bed than any previous one. After the sun went down for Jesus’ generation the possibilities were limited – lighting a room artificially was expensive and complicated, which thus increased the appeal of two things for which the dark is suited, one of which is sleep! However, electric light at the flick of a switch, television through the night, and an internet that (like God himself) will neither slumber nor sleep, have created endless alternatives. The result is that children at the beginning of the twenty-first century are having an average of two hours sleep per day less than their grandparents did at the same stage of their lives.

Blessings on him who created sleep, the mantle that covers all human thoughts, the food that satisfies hunger, the drink that slakes thirst, the fire that warms cold, the cold that moderates heat, the common currency that buys all things, the balance that equalises the shepherd and the king, the simpleton and the sage. Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, 1547–1616

Researchers are understandably concerned about the physical and mental toll of this, and recommend that we all take the simple pleasure that sleep offers far more seriously. Their advice to those who want to detox their lives of restlessness is to establish a regular sleep pattern as part of a daily routine. They suggest that we will benefit if the end of our day is occupied with activities that relax us, such as reading or having a bath. And their evidence shows that taking care over the position we choose when we get into bed can improve the quality of our sleep. They recommend being conscious of having our spines in a straight line whether we sleep on our backs or sides, and suggest that we have one good quality pillow, and lie on it so that our necks are not pulled in awkward angles.

Those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit advance even when they are asleep. Brother Lawrence, monk, 1611–91

Treat sleep as a gift that God has given us because he loves us. Perhaps for 40 days the third of the day that is wasted could become the third of the day during which God does something wonderful for us.

Detox: For the next few days, write down the hours that you intend to sleep in your diary, as if your sleep is an appointment that you intend to prioritize. Fit in your other activities around it, and monitor whether you feel more refreshed as your body gets used to the discipline.

Lord God, before I am exhausted from filling every last second, earning every last penny, pushing every last boundary, show me a better way. Amen.