NOTHING is more unequally divided than the measure of care, which by God’s appointment is laid upon one person and another.
Thousands upon thousands have simply no knowledge of care. They live along like children until their death. With their fixed task for the day their morning meal is ready at their waking. That work they do; that bread they eat; and when night spreads its pale shadows again, they lie down, and fall asleep.
But such is by no means the case with all. There are also those in higher and humbler circles, whose heart is burdened day by day by many and great responsibilities, by trying uncertainties of many sorts, by overmuch work, or also by distress.
What many a one puts upon himself herewith, we do not count. Imaginary trouble and anxiety does not come to us from God, but is fruit of our little faith. And he who every morning and every evening lays hold on the courage of faith to listen to Jesus’ word, that we should not be careful about to-morrow, will by constant practice of faith be soon enough delivered from this unnecessary care. This imaginary care is at home with the heathen, not with God’s children. And he who dares to be a disciple of Jesus, is truly liberated from this imagined care by the Son.
Suicide, which so often proved the hellish deep, into which such imaginary care at length cast its victim, is altogether spared the man of faith.
Care, which God lays upon us, never entices one to this terrible sin. Suicide is always fruit of our own, God dishonoring unbelief.
All cares, which men needlessly shoulder themselves, we here pass by in silence. We only speak of the cares which God lays upon a man; and though faith always has sufficient elasticity and more, in our struggles with those cares to keep standing, yet these cares also are sometimes dreadfully trying and heavy.
ESPECIALLY at night this tells.
Then every one is asleep. But not the man whose heart is burdened by heavy care.
He cannot sleep. His head is too full of all sorts of thoughts crossing each other, jostling each other and chasing each other. His soul is restless within him. His blood is and remains too strongly fermented. His heart throbs, that his ear catches the sound of it. And so he remains in a tension, and after brief slumberings is startled again by threatening dream-phantoms.
For him there is no refreshment, rather aggravation of unrest. For night troubles the nerves, and instead of restoring one’s strength, the tormenting struggle of sleeplessness saps the same.
This can be different. With one it may simply mean one sleepless night, from anxiety about a grave decision, that must be made the next morning, or an important task, that must be done on that day. Then one does not sleep at all. It can also be, that constant care and overstimulation of head and heart has turned the plague of sleeplessness into a chronic ailment, so that although at length one does sleep, yet every night upon retiring one has to struggle through again the selfsame number of trying hours. It can be, what is called acute, but it can also be chronic. Still always in its origin and nature one. Bitter fruit of an overwrought life, exceeding the measure of our powers.
IN days of sickness sleeplessness bears an entirely different character. Then it can also take place with a child, which otherwise, with his carefree life, is already asleep before he yet touches the pillow.
Then this plague does not rise from the soul, but from the body. The working is the same, but in opposite direction. The sick can even be so far gone, that he no more thinks of anything, becomes indifferent to everything, has no more care about anything, and yet is not able to sleep.
If he could sleep, he were saved.
But that saving sleep tarries; sleep-medicine may drowse him, but does not give real, healthy, natural sleep.
This comes, because the body is indisposed; because the blood burns with feverheat; because the nerves are over-excited, and because thereby the brain is continuously active, sometimes even becoming delirious.
But however different the cause may be, the effect is the same. Both he, with whom it rises from the soul, and he, with whom it rises from the body, lack that wondrous restoration of strength, that is appointed by God Almighty for the children of men in the mystery of sleep.
Sleep is an invention of God. It is His handiwork. He has thought it out and wrought it. And though no one ever succeeded yet, and no one ever will, in discovering the nature of sleep, yet, when he may wake up refreshed, every child of God thanks his Father, Who is in the heavens; for from those heavens, and by that Father, sleep in him was wrought.
BUT, if then God gives sleep, whence those anxious sleeplessnesses?
And to this question you find in Scripture alone again the answer, when from that deep conviction of soul Asaph tells you, that: God held mine eyes waking (Ps. 77, 4). Or rather, for this does not say enough, Asaph does not tell you, but God, and testifies to the Lord his Covenant-God: “Thou heldest mine eyes waking.”
What wealth of piety there lies ensconsed in a single testimony of this sort.
Of God sleep; but of God also sleeplessness. No, stronger still, when Asaph lay sleepless on his bed, he knew, that it was God, Who from moment to moment held his eyes waking.
It was not, that God allowed him sleep, but that some other cause averted sleep from his eyelids.
No, no, God Himself did it.
It was God’s own will, that he did not sleep.
And it was his God, Who, as with unseen fingers, held his eyelids open, when he wanted to close them in slumber.
See, this is piety, this is faith.
When you lie down helplessly and restlessly turn on your bed, not to utter a cry now and then: “O, God, give me sleep”; but to know, to believe and to testify to God Himself, that also in that troublous sleeplessness from moment to moment you are operated upon by your God, and that nothing overtakes you, except what He brings upon you.
AND do you not feel, how such faith is at the same time medicine?
For should there not go forth from such unshaken confidence in the presence of the Lord God, also in the dark of night, also when no one knows of your suffering, a calm-producing operation upon your nervous system, as well as upon the life of your soul?
To be sure to get asleep, advice used to be given, by great power of will to concentrate one’s thoughts upon a single point. Well, then, let that one point be your God.
So long as you remain alone with your cares and your unrest, these cares rise mountain high before you, and surround and immure you on all sides. But when your God is with you, and you are permitted to be near unto your God, then He alone becomes great, and seen in the light of His Majesty, your cares dwindle down to so much smaller dimensions.
It is a difficult task that awaits you the next day, well, that same God, Who now keeps your eyes waking, will also be with you when that daytask comes, and in the night He will have taught you, also with respect to that daytask, to trust yourself to Him alone.
Also in such troublous nights things do not go on outside of your God. Even if you slept, it would not be your sleep, that refreshes you, but your God, even as it is not your bread, but your God Who preserves you in life.
Thus when you would say: “If now God would give my sick child a night’s sleep, he would recover,” when your heavenly Father holds the eyes of your child waking, He still knows what He is doing.
If possible by sleep, but if needs be, without sleep, God shall hold your child in His almighty hand.
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