Daily Manna · Day 59 · February 28
Sweet Sleep
“When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.”
You get into bed and the day starts over. The email you did not send. The tone you used with your kid. The number in the account that will not stretch.
Solomon's promise arrives with a then attached, and the then is three verses long. My son, let not them depart from thine eyes: keep sound wisdom and discretion. Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not stumble. Then, and only then, when thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid. He is describing a life, not a bedtime routine, and the sleep is a symptom of the life rather than a technique to be applied at eleven at night. Two verses on he names where the confidence actually sits, and it is not in the sleeper: for the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken. Sweet sleep comes of putting your weight on somebody who does not sleep.
Which is worth doing tonight, in whatever small form is available. Put the phone across the room. Take the three things you were going to rehearse in the dark and hand them over by name, and say you are finished with them until morning. If one of them is something you did wrong, make it right when it is light.
Then the day starts over, which is what it does. The question is only whether it starts over on you, or somewhere else, in the hands of somebody who was going to be awake through all of it anyway.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 59 is The Road Out of Moab (Ruth 1:16).