Happy New Year…
“I cannot pray at night in bed,” many people confess to me. “I just end up falling asleep. I feel so bad falling asleep on God.” In response I always say, “The way I see it, there is no better way to fall asleep.”
Drifting to sleep sharing thoughts with God, what could be better? In fact, I think falling asleep in prayer is exactly what happens in Psalm 139:17-18 (NIV). I can envision the writer being you or me, crawling in bed on December 31st, settling into a trancelike state of reviewing our day, summing up our year, laying each busy thought on the lap of our living LORD.
“How precious to me are your thoughts, God,” our prayer begins with gratitude for the multifaceted thoughts our omnipresent Maker. “How vast is the sum of them!” We slow our mind’s pace, and we ponder God’s vastness. We stop and recall a life-changing revelation, “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts'” (Isaiah 55:8-10, NIV). As our mind nestles into the great grandeur of God, our thoughts drift back to the Psalm at hand, our small thoughts sift into God’s endless sea of thoughts, “Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – “
With one simple “dash – ” I think the the writer of this Psalm falls dead asleep, inviting us to do the same.
Just like counting a huge hillside of sheep, as we try to count the vast array of God’s higher thoughts, we naturally fall to sleep. Our named and unnamed anxieties fold quietly into our Father’s care. Our worries look wee in the face of our Creator’s cacophony of concerns. Our racing mind rests as we give up our search to know it all, to be it all, to understand it all, right now. For who has known the mind and purposes of the Lord, so as to instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ [to be guided by His thoughts and purposes] (1 Corinthians 2:16, AMP). Accessing the humble power of Christ’s surrendered mind, peacefulness permeates all of us, as our tiny thoughts gently drop like rain into the timeless treasury of God Almighty.
With one simple “dash – ” I think the the writer of this Psalm falls dead asleep, drifting to sleep in our Creator’s care. And after the “dash -” what comes next? Time evaporates as God’s higher thoughts …outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you. After we drift to sleep in the safekeeping of our Savior, when we wake, our awareness awakes too, “Wow, I am still with God.” Intimately intertwined with Immanuel, God is also still with us. Always. Every waking and sleeping moment. Every day. Every year. Every lifetime.
On this first morn of 2020, when we wake, our awareness awakes too, “Wow, we are still with God, and incredibly God is still with us.”
Awake or asleep, with John 15:4 (MSG), God coaxes us to keep consciously aware of our constant closeness, “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.”
…Sue…
