Is Sleep a Problem to Be Solved?

Or a gift to be received?

Here’s a reality we all have to face.

We will likely spend 1/3 of our life sleeping.

This begs more than a few questions.

Is sleep a problem to be solved? A hindrance to our lives? A barrier to our productivity? Aren’t there better things we could be doing than spending hours of our day unconscious?

For some, the answer to this question is a resounding yes. Sleep is a problem. It’s an inconvenient necessity. Sleep is a fact of life they hate.

They read that the average person spends 26 years of their life sleeping and see it as a tragedy. “Just imagine how much more we could accomplish with an extra 26 years of life!” So they hunt for hacks.

Supplements, technology, environmental adjustments.

Anything to get by on less sleep and get more done. Because sleep is the problem and productivity is the ultimate good…..or is it god?

This is the modern vision of sleep.

It’s enticing to many.

And it’s far from the picture we find in Scripture.

He gives sleep to his beloved

The Bible portrays sleep not as a problem to be solved but as an act of faith to be enacted and a gift to be received.

In Psalm 127, the one who sleeps less to work more does not receive praise for maximizing their time but for wasting it. They do so “in vain….eating the bread of anxious toil.”

In contrast, the person of faith sleeps when it’s time to rest, receiving slumber as a gift from God. For “he gives sleep to his beloved.” In sleep, we reassert our belovedness as something received, not earned.

We don’t toil away to become God’s beloved. We rest in this received identity - we literally sleep in it.

The godly aren’t trying to maximize their time.

They’re trying to live in faith—to live in God’s reality.

A reality where we “work hard as unto the LORD” but when the work is done we rest in the truth that our work is made pleasing to God through the work of Christ.

We work because we’re God’s beloved.

Then we sleep because we’re God’s beloved.

Productivity is not our god. Jehovah is.

Set free from the bonds of productivity and the demands of incessant success, we work for him and we sleep for him.

The next time you feel like you’re falling behind or feel like your bodily needs are getting in the way of your productivity, remember this.

“He gives sleep to his beloved.”