Sleep is all the rage in the wellness industry. For good reason.
Every year, science discovers new restorative benefits sleep provides for our physical, cognitive, and emotional health; new connections between good sleep habits and reduced risks of various diseases. Increasingly, sleep is viewed as the mother of all health hacks—“the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day,” according to one prominent sleep researcher.
The scientific consensus is clear: It’s wise to sleep.
But the wisdom of sleep goes deeper. There’s a way sleep teaches us truth and forms us spiritually. There’s biblical wisdom we can glean from nightly repose. More than just a practical recharge, sleep can be a doxological liturgy—an embodied rhythm and spiritual discipline that helps us better love God and others.
More than just a practical recharge, sleep can be a doxological liturgy.
We often assume that these greatest commandments (“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Mark 12:30–31) can only be heeded in waking life. But what about the third of our lives we spend sleeping? Is that wasted time?
Far from it. Sleep can be a potent realm for growing us in love for God and others.
Sleep Leads Us to Worship God
The purpose of life is worship. God’s creatures were made to praise him. To love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is to do what we were created for.
Has sleep ever led you to love God more? It does for me all the time:
- The Sabbath afternoon nap (preferably with the soothing sounds of televised golf in the background) after a spiritually rich morning at church
- Turning off the lights, locking the door, and hitting the pillow after the last murmurs of my four children die down and the house is quiet
- Waking up in that rare, miraculous zone of feeling rested and restored—the dawning sun signaling new mercies
These are quotidian moments that regularly tune my heart to sing God’s praise. “Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.” We glorify God by day and by night.
Sleep can enhance each of Mark 12:30’s four modes of loving God—with heart, soul, mind, and strength.
1. Gratitude to a Gracious Giver (Heart)
Sleep is a gift God gives his beloved (Ps. 127:2). Yet do we see this seemingly mundane reality of everyday life as a gift? Do we thank God for it?
We should. Sleep is perhaps the greatest gift God wired into our biological design. It nightly restores us, mind, body, and soul. When we lay our head down at night and drift into sleep—and then when we wake again to new morning mercies—we ought to thank and worship God for his extravagant grace.
2. Rehearsal of the Gospel (Soul)
As our nightly sleep-wake cycle mimics death and resurrection, it can remind us of our spiritual death and the regeneration possible in Christ. What happens in the “death” of our nightly sleep is nothing short of miraculous. Every biological system in our body is renewed as we sleep.
How interesting that this daily renewal of our health comes not from our striving harder but from our willingness to “die” by succumbing to sleep 7–8 hours each night. The healing power of sleep we receive, not achieve. The “death” of sleep literally brings forth new life. As it does, it can direct our worship to the God whose death brings forth our eternal life.
3. Trust in God’s Sovereignty (Mind)
Every night’s sleep is an invitation to trust God. Scottish theologian John Baillie says, “Sleep comes best to those who most put their trust in God.” He’s right. Like a child peacefully asleep in his mother’s arms, our sweetest rest comes when we surrender into the safe and loving embrace of our Father.
God doesn’t sleep. He is always awake, always keeping watch (Ps. 121:3–4). He’s sovereign, and that truth—if we really believe it—helps us sleep better. God is awake so we don’t always have to be. What a reason to praise him!
4. Stewardship of Work and Mission (Strength)
Sleep also leads us to worship God by restoring our bodies so we’re freshly equipped for good work and fruitful mission in waking life. As we prioritize good sleep habits (ideally 7–9 hours nightly), we’re worshiping God with our bodies.
God is awake so we don’t always have to be. What a reason to praise him!
Just as a fallow field, a fruit tree’s pruning, or the seeming barrenness of winter gives way for a more fruitful spring and harvest, so too does our rest equip us for more fruitful ministry. If we see work as worship, we should see sleep and rest as worship too.
Sleep Helps Us Love Others
Good stewardship of sleep also helps us heed the commandment to love our neighbor. This is an underemphasized part of sleep: how your sleep affects others, for good or ill.
When your sleep is bad, you can negatively affect those around you:
- Sleep-deprived parents can be grumpy or scratchy with their kids or spouse.
- Sleep-deprived workers can underperform in their jobs or even make costly mistakes.
- Sleep-deprived drivers can cause accidents that prove deadly to others.
But when you get enough sleep, the opposite tends to happen. You’re a blessing to others:
- Well-rested parents and spouses have more energy to be a loving, attentive, nonanxious presence in the home.
- Well-rested workers serve their employer by being mentally and physically sharp on the job.
- Well-rested friends can be a haven of peace and needed encouragement for people experiencing suffering or uncertainty.
At times, you can love your neighbor by sacrificing your best sleep so that others can sleep well.
- Parents of babies sacrifice their own sleep quality to ensure the babies get the sleep they need.
- Doctors and nurses working night shifts choose irregular sleep patterns for themselves as an act of service to those needing care in the night.
- Friends hosting friends as houseguests choose to sleep on the living room couch so their guests can enjoy a comfy bed and bedroom.
These are a few of many examples of how our sleep can be an act of love for others.
Hymn of Grateful Praise
I love the 19th-century hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth.” It beautifully captures the right impulse to gratefully praise God for all the wonders of his creation. Even a basic daily wonder like sleep. As we drift into sleep each night, and then wake each morning, God’s mercy and holiness should be front of mind: “Early in the morning / Our song shall rise to thee!”
We should praise God in the morning and the evening. We should praise him for the morning and the evening. We should praise God as we rest and as we work. We should praise him for the gifts of rest and work.
For the beauty of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower,
sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.
