My brilliant, beautiful, bold 2.5-year-old son still doesn’t sleep through the night. Needless to say, I’m not sure what I would do with a consecutive six hours of sleep. Maybe I would wake up with butterfly wings, ready to soar into the sun and take on the day. Perhaps I would simply have fewer dark circles under my eyes and remember why I walked into the kitchen.
Who knows?
Even though motherhood has claimed most of my sleep, many others, regardless of their life seasons and roles, are challenged by a lack of sleep, too. In fact, my husband and son’s optometrist explained just this week that modern living, specifically concerning screens and a variety of tech devices, is damaging our eyes and our minds, which subsequently impacts our sleep.
Limiting screen time, getting outside, and finding healthy ways to wind down each evening can aid our bodies throughout the night, which boosts our emotional and mental regularity. However, this need for sleep is also a deeper need for overall rest, which produces an important spiritual question for Christians: If rest is not a reward but a rhythm God designed for us, how might reclaiming healthy sleep help us trust Him more and resist the pressure to always do more?
Let’s look at Scripture to better understand how to adopt a healthy relationship with rest as a God-given instrument for not only our productivity, but also spiritual peace.
Before God Ever Commanded Rest, He Modeled it.
The first time we see the Sabbath honored is by God Himself. Genesis 2:2-3 (NIV) says, “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”
One might think a whole day’s rest would be completely necessary after creating everything, but God’s being isn’t limited, finite, or slowed down by anything. Thus, rest was initially created as a gift of pause. In this pause, God allowed Himself to not only know but rejoice in the goodness He had made.
Perhaps God visited with the stars, talked with the animals, and shared a meal with man. I wouldn’t dare limit how God would spend a day rejoicing in His creation, which makes me wonder if that’s what we are missing in our idea of the Sabbath.
It’s not only a time to physically rest to restore the body, but it’s a time to rejoice to restore the heart, mind, and soul. Rest calls us to actively pursue God’s gifts of goodness, and if we take this pause with our spiritual glasses on, we will discover the Spirit’s joy.
This idea of rested rejoicing and joy is what makes me consider why God later commanded the Israelites to honor the Sabbath with strict directions. They weren’t to make meals, clean, travel, etc. At first, this idea of rest seems rigid, like anything but a chance for joy and peace. But the more I study Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, the more I realize that the Israelites were only consistently good at one thing: Complaining. They constantly wanted more, were never satisfied with God’s provisions, and begged many times to return to their enslavement in Egypt.
The Israelites chose bondage over discomfort, their wants over God’s commands, and in that, they forgot what it meant to rejoice.
I wonder if the rules weren’t a harsh punishment, so much as God’s way of putting His children in timeout, where they had to sit still long enough to calm down their wild, irrational emotions and think through their actions. In this Old Testament commandment, I don’t see God as an emotionless rulemaker, but as a caring, concerned parent gently saying, “If you’ll just trust me and hold still, I promise joy is on the other side. Work with me, even if this means sitting still.”
This little script seems to be confirmed in the Gospels, when we see Jesus declare that the Sabbath isn’t about following rules but about man finding God’s glory in rest. Mark 2:27 (NLT) says, “Then Jesus said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.’”
Strength for the Weary Comes through Rest
I often think about 1 Kings 19:4-8 (NIV), when the prophet Elijah was fleeing the evil Jezebel. He was so worn, tired, and stressed that he begged God to end his life. God’s response (in modern, shortened terms) was, “You just need food and a nap, kid. You’ll be okay.” Specifically, the Scripture says:
While he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.
All at once, an angel touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.’ So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.”
Did you catch the part that says, “...the journey is too much for you”? Our need for rest isn’t just about regulating our nervous systems but about realizing that peace and freedom are only found when we accept that we are limited beings. The moment we come to the end of ourselves and need desperate rejuvenation, we have the opportunity to leave our inabilities, fears, and exhaustion at the feet of Jesus and allow Him to heal and restore us, inside and out.
Our need for rest isn’t met so we can do more. Our need for rest is met so we recognize that we can’t do more. We can’t sustain perfect rhythms and routines. We can’t hold the entire world in our hands. Rather, we can be freed from such an impossible weight by accepting humility in the simplest form of taking a nap.
Pacing Our Lives by God’s Rhythm, Not the World’s Demands
The body of a believer is constantly wrestling. It’s both finite but preparing for the infinite, limited but longing to leave limitations behind. But we are called to put this wrestling to rest as we lean into mercy and grace, the gifts we can’t earn and certainly don’t deserve. In humbly recognizing our need for rest, in surrendering our desperate idolization of productivity, we find the true freedom to pace ourselves by God’s rhythms of hope and rejoicing.
As we reclaim sleep, may we reclaim our God-given gift of pause, finding joy in our Savior’s intimate hand in all things, even the simple, slow ones.
“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.” Hebrews 4:9-10 - NIV
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Sander Sammy
