Daily Manna · Day 265 · September 22
Peaceful Sleep
“I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.”
Another psalm says it flatly: so he giveth his beloved sleep. At one in the morning that is one of the least believable sentences in the Bible.
The objection is worth stating properly rather than being talked over. Telling a person who cannot sleep that God keeps them safe does not make them sleep. Anxiety is not a doctrinal error to be corrected. It is a body that has decided to stay on watch, and no verse switches that off on command.
So look at what the psalm actually claims, because it claims less than people think and more than they notice. The first verse locates it: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress. This is not written from a settled life. And the load-bearing word in verse eight is only. Thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety. He does not say he feels safe. He says the safety was never in his keeping to begin with, which is a statement about the arrangement rather than about his nerves. He lies down because the watch is being kept whether or not he is the one keeping it.
So do the small honest thing tonight. Not a technique. Hand over the one item you were planning to lie there rehearsing, name it plainly, and then lie down with it unresolved. You were not keeping this house last night either.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 265 is Thou God Seest Me (Genesis 16:13).