"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." - Victor Hugo
God never sleeps. There should be comfort in that but I had a friend today relay the news that neither the combined efforts of her tea, her melatonin pill and her Ambein was a guarantee that she would get any sleep tonight. I had another friend tell me just last week that he is averaging only three hours of shut-eye per night. I will admit that I am sometimes no stranger to the world of 3:00 am myself. It happens. Life happens. Bills happen. Problems happen. We are surrounded by these happenings and the first thing to go out the window is our peace. Peace of mind. Peace of spirit. Peace of being.
Our pastor at church lately has taken hold of a passage of scripture and refused to let go of it:
"Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." - Phillipians 3:13-14
For weeks now he has been hammering it home. Sometimes to begin the service, sometimes to end it, sometimes repeatedly in between. Scripture constantly reminds us to strive, to strain, to seek, to pursue. These are all very active verbs and their goal is always God...and the peace of God...which transcends all understanding. If you believe the bible then if you aren't at peace it's because you aren't seeking God, or you're seeking him in the wrong ways or you've gotten lost somehow, as we all do from time to time. Believers, non-believers or kinda-believers...it's all the same. We all have to decide whether or not we will dwell in midst of sleepless nights or instead, lying in the hands of God, we will close our eyes and surrender our worries, like the weightless things they are, to the winds of faith.
My soul finds rest in God
alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken. - Psalm 62:1-2
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