Wakefulness

In her book, Aging Faithfully, Alice Fryling writes about what she learned from insomnia:

Sleep has always been difficult for me, but about the time I turned sixty, insomnia came banging at my door. I lay awake every night for hours. Sometimes in anxiety, sometimes in boredom. I prayed every night that God would help me sleep. That didn't work. It only made my insomnia worse because then I would lie awake trying to solve the theological issues around unanswered prayer.

One tired morning as I sat in quiet, I began to wonder why God created us to sleep in the first place. If I were God, I would want people to stay awake to help take care of the world. But for about eight hours out of every twenty-four, God designed us to be asleep.

I realized that when I sleep, I am out of control. When I experience insomnia, I am also out of control. I certainly cannot make myself go to sleep. Perhaps insomnia and sleep accomplish the same purpose. In other words, insomnia was a reminder, like sleep, that we do not control our own lives, let alone the world. God is our Creator and is the one in charge.

My ‘theology of sleep’ is my own personal reminder that God is God and I am not. God is in control of my life, my waking and sleeping hours, in loving, creative, grace-filled ways. Apparently, my being out of control is part of God's design.

Have you ever wondered what happens in your brain while you sleep? A good night's sleep does more than just help you feel rested; it might literally clear your mind.

A study published in the journal Cell shows how deep sleep may wash away waste buildup in the brain during waking hours, an essential process for maintaining brain health. According to one researcher, “It’s like turning on the dishwasher before you go to bed and waking up with a clean brain.”

Research sheds light on how deep sleep plays a crucial role in “cleaning” the brain by flushing out waste products that accumulate during waking hours. This process, known as glymphatic clearance, is driven by the brain’s glymphatic system to remove toxic proteins associated with neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

The study identified norepinephrine, a molecule released during deep sleep, as a key player in this process. Researchers observed in mice that norepinephrine waves occur roughly every 50 seconds, causing blood vessels to contract and create rhythmic pulsations. These pulsations act as a pump, propelling brain fluid to wash away waste.

These findings, which likely apply to humans, highlight the importance of high-quality, natural sleep for maintaining cognitive health. Poor sleep may disrupt waste clearance, potentially increasing the risk of neurological disorders. Researchers noted that understanding these mechanisms can help people make informed decisions about their sleep and overall brain health.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sleep is a precious gift from God, reminding us of the importance of rest in our lives. By modeling rest himself, God teaches us that taking time to recharge is necessary. Renewing our minds is crucial, and rest allows us to do just that—refreshing our thoughts and rejuvenating our spirit.

Your brain is planning to remind you of the stupid thing you did 15 years ago in the early hours of tomorrow morning. It reckons on waking you up with a jolt after only three hours of sleep. Then it will spend much of the rest of the night replaying a list your greatest (mistakes).

The spongy grey lump which sits between your ears is planning a real “greatest hits” retrospective which will include every dumb thing you’ve ever said. That time you got it completely wrong with the person you really fancied and doomed yourself to a life of regret and loneliness. Every stupid … choice you’ve ever made and how people are only your friends because they pity you.

It expects this will be complete by about 6:30am, by which time you’ll have to get up and go to work and pretend you’re just fine. When asked, your brain said it intends to do this randomly at intervals for the rest of your life.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Since no one is without sin (Ps. 143:2; Rom. 3:10), you will have many regrets, shameful memories, and sins to ponder late at night (Ps. 32:1-6). Only in Christ can we find true forgiveness, release from a guilty conscience, and the promise that “God’s mercy is new every morning” (Lam. 3:23-24).

Kenyon Wilson, a professor at the University of Tennessee, wanted to test whether any of his students fully read the syllabus for his music seminar. Of the more than 70 students enrolled in the class, none apparently did. Wilson said he knows this because on the second page of the three-page syllabus he included the location and combination to a locker, inside of which was a $50 cash prize. But when the semester ended on December 8, students went home and the cash was unclaimed. Wilson wrote on Facebook “My semester-long experiment has come to an end. Today I retrieved the unclaimed treasure.”

Wilson said he wanted to include the hidden clues to brighten up the semester during the pandemic. “Teaching in a pandemic, I’m trying to do creative things and, you know, make it interesting. The syllabus is a really dry document, but I thought if my students are reading it, I might as well reward them.”

Tanner Swoyer, a senior studying instrumental music education, said that he felt “pretty dumb, pretty stupid” when he saw the professor’s post about the money in the locker.

Wilson said he was not disappointed with his students. When he was a student, he most likely would have also missed the clues, he said. “We read the parts that we deem important. You know, what’s the attendance policy? What are the things I need to do to pass this class? And then there’s other stuff. On the first day of the semester I pointed out: ‘Hey, there are some new things in the syllabus. Make sure you, you know, make sure you catch them,’ and then no one did.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Alertness; Bible reading; Scripture – Believers need to read the Word of God with careful attention because there are many hidden riches to be discovered; 2) Prayer; Promises of God – God has given us very great and precious promises in his Word which we can claim by faith through prayer (2 Pet. 1:4).

During the late-Medieval period, London had a strange law on the books—each entry gate into the city had to keep a musician on duty. This could be a dangerous job—city gates were where attackers and other threatening outsiders first appeared. It’s like border patrol nowadays, but they gave the job to musicians.

As strange as it sounds, musicians took charge of many essential services back then. These hired municipal minstrels started showing up everywhere in Europe around the year 1370. They typically played wind instruments—including trumpets, trombones, fifes, bagpipes, and recorders—as well as percussion.

To the modern mind, musical skills and police responsibilities have little in common, but in an earlier age the two roles often overlapped. Musicians not only helped defend the city gate but might also be required to patrol streets at night. In Norwich in 1440 a tax was instituted to pay the waits for their watch—and these musicians were required to take an oath of office. In Germany, a minstrel was expected “to acquit himself well as a swordsman.”

Why musicians? The most obvious answer is that musicians were ideal first responders because they could sound the alarm in case of a major disturbance. Certainly, a loud horn or drum helps in that regard. This signaling capacity of musical instruments also explains their longstanding use in military operations.

Possible Preaching Angles:

In the same way, every follower of Jesus is called to stay awake, to stay at our post, to guard and protect, and pray for the “city gate” where the Lord has posted us.

The American Sleep Apnea Association estimates that 22 million of us suffer from some form of sleep apnea. This is a potentially serious disorder in which we repeatedly stop breathing in our sleep. The long-term effects of sleep apnea include high blood pressure, stroke, heart attacks, and is a risk factor for dementia.

CPAP machines are the most widely used device for treating moderate and severe sleep apnea. Through a mask and tube the CPAP machine pumps a continuous stream of oxygenated air allowing you to breathe continuously while you sleep. When you first start using a CPAP machine, the pressure of the rushing air can feel suffocating, but you eventually get used to it.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Two of the most common words translated as "spirit" in the Bible can also be translated "air." In Ephesians 5:18 the present passive imperative verb translated "be filled" tells us that we are commanded to be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, Christians suffer from Spirit apnea, a serious disorder in which we repeatedly stop breathing in the life-giving Spirit of God. It's a congenital defect borne out of our spiritual depravity. Spirit apnea, like sleep apnea, can have a grave effect on our hearts, minds, and actions.

Spiritual disciplines are like CPAP machines. They supply us with a continuous flow of God's life-sustaining Spirit. Some of these disciplines include prayer, fasting, Bible reading/meditation, worship, giving, and evangelism. At first these disciplines can seem overwhelming. Over time though, you get used to them and begin to notice the effects.

There once was a time people were awakened, not by a cell phone or even an alarm clock, but by a “knocker-upper.” For many workers in early 20th century Britain, the daily alarm clock was a service worker. Known as the “knocker-upper” these predawn risers would pass by working-class buildings, rapping on the windows of those who need to get up.

Rural laborers, used to keeping time with the seasons, had relocated to manufacturing cities. They not only had to adjust to dangerous, fast-paced industrial work, but to new schedules. There were alarm clocks at the time, but they were expensive and unreliable.

Some workers might only find out they’d been called in for a shift from the knocker-upper that morning. Conditions could be cutthroat. Author Paul Middleton writes, “Life for the employed was forever balanced on a knife edge. Being late for work could mean instant dismissal and a speedy spiral for those workers and their families into poverty, homelessness and destitution.”

The job went obsolete around a hundred years after it was invented, as alarm clocks became more affordable and reliable and working conditions improved.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Employee; Work & Career – We should value the members of our church who work hard to earn a living. It is easy to demand too much of them as volunteers if we do not understand their labor. 2) End Times; Second Coming – As we near the end of the age, there is even a greater need for people to be awakened before it is too late (Rom. 13:11; Eph. 5:14)

Be sure to read the fine print. We’ve all heard it, but how many people do it? At least one and it just netted her an easy $10,000. St. Petersburg-based company Squaremouth hid the instructions for claiming the prize in the document for every travel insurance policy it sold.

The company planned to run the contest for an entire year. They thought it unlikely that anyone would notice the section titled “pays to read” on page seven of the nearly 4,000-word document. But they didn’t count on high school teacher Donelan Andrews. The self-described “nerd” who said she always reads the terms, whether it’s a digital software user agreement, or a travel insurance policy.

Andrews printed out her policy and sat down to read it right away. Soon she came across a section that said, “(This is) a contest that rewards the individual who reads their policy information from start to finish. If you are … the first to contact us, you may be awarded the Pays to Read contest Grand Prize of ten thousand dollars.”

Andrews wrote to the company immediately. She got a call back the next day to let her know she’d won the $10,000. The contest was only 23 hours into its yearlong run. “The main reason I always do it is that (in college) I majored in consumer economics,” she said. “So, it’s always been a passion of mine to be consumer aware.”

The company estimates only about 1 percent of its customers read their policies. Andrews, who is soon to retire, said she plans to use the prize money to fund a trip to Scotland for her 35th wedding anniversary.

Possible Preaching Angles: 1) Alertness; Bible reading; Scripture – Believers need to read the Word of God with the same careful attention because there are many hidden riches to be discovered; 2) Prayer; Promises of God – God has given us very great and precious promises which we can claim by faith through prayer (2 Peter 1:4).

In his book “The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy,” Timothy Keller recalls the following:

Years ago, I read an old fairy tale about a wicked witch who lived in a remote cottage in the deep forest. When travelers came through looking for lodging, she offered them a meal and a bed. It was the most wonderfully comfortable bed any of them had ever felt. But it was a bed full of deep magic, and if you were asleep in it when the sun came up you would turn to stone. Then you became a figure in the witch’s statuary, trapped until the end of time. The witch forced a young girl to serve her, and though she had no power to resist the witch, the girl had become more and more filled with pity for her victims.

One day a young man came looking for bed and board and was taken in. The servant girl could not bear to see him turned to stone. So she threw sticks, stones, and thistles into his bed. It made the bed horribly uncomfortable. Every time he turned he felt a new painful object under him. Though he cast each one out, there was always a new one to dig into his flesh. He slept only fitfully and rose feeling weary and worn, long before dawn. As he walked out the front door, the servant girl met him, and he berated her cruelly. “How could you give a traveler such a terrible bed full of sticks and stones?” He cried and went on his way. “Ah,” she said under her breath, “the misery you know now is nothing like the infinitely greater misery a comfortable sleep would have brought upon you! Those were my sticks and stones of love.”

Keller continues: God puts sticks and stones of love in our beds to wake us up, to bring us to rely on him, lest the end of history or of life overtake us without the Lord in our heart, and we be turned to stone.

In his book Whisper, Mark Batterson writes that on December 26, 2004, the third-largest earthquake ever recorded by seismograph occurred deep beneath the Indian Ocean. It registered 9.1-magnitude on the Richter scale, and the shock waves produced tsunami waves more than one hundred feet in height, traveling five hundred miles per hour and reaching a radius of three thousand miles. This deadliest tsunami in history claimed 227,898 lives, but one people group living right in its path miraculously survived without a single casualty.

The Moken are an Austronesian ethnic group that live on the open seas from birth to death. Their handcrafted wooden boats, called kabang, function as houseboats for these sea gypsies. Moken children learn to swim before they learn to walk. They can see twice as clearly underwater as landlubbers. And if there were an underwater breath-holding contest, it would be no contest. But it wasn't any of these skills that saved them from the tsunami. What saved them was their intimacy with the ocean. The Moken know its moods and messages better than any oceanographer, reading ocean waves the way we read street signs.

On the day of the earthquake, an amateur photographer from Bangkok was taking pictures of the Moken when she became concerned by what she saw. As the sea started to recede, many of the Moken were crying. They knew what was about to happen. They recognized that the birds had stopped chirping, the cicadas had gone silent, the elephants were headed toward higher ground, and the dolphins were swimming farther out to sea.

Fishermen in the same vicinity as the Moken were blindsided by the tsunami and had no survivors. "They were collecting squid," said one Moken survivor. "They don't know how to look." The waves and birds and cicadas and elephants and dolphins were speaking to those Burmese fishermen, but sadly they didn't know how to listen.

A local anthropologist who speaks Moken said, "The water receded very fast and one wave, one small wave, came so they recognized that this is not ordinary."

Possible Preaching Angles: Listening to God; Attention; Prayer—Like the Moken, Christians are people who can pay attention to the presence of danger and the presence of God.

In their book Known, Dick and Ruth Foth tell a poignant story of devotion and loyalty:

Edinburgh, Scotland, is famous for a story of a dog and his owner that express devotion and tenacity in equal measure. The story began in 1850, when John Gray came to the city to be a gardener. Unable to find work, he joined the police force as a night watchmen. To keep him company through the long nights, he would take his small Skye terrier named Bobby with him on his rounds. They became part of the living landscape of the city night after night for years.

John later contracted tuberculosis and died in the winter of 1858; he was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard. What happened next became legend in the city. Bobby, the Skye terrier, would not leave his master's grave. Except for accepting midday meals from the kind people in the area, Bobby stayed there day and night with his master. The caretaker tried on many occasions to evict the dog, but to no avail. Finally, he provided the little dog with a shelter by the grave.

When the city passed an ordinance that all unlicensed dogs would be destroyed, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, William Chambers, purchased a license for Bobby and had a collar engraved for the little dog. Until his death fourteen years later, the citizens cared for Bobby while he guarded his master's body. If you walk to Greyfriars Kirkyard today, you can't miss the statue that stands across the street. It is a sculpture of Bobby with these words inscribed on the base:

Greyfriars Bobby—died 14th January 1872—aged 16 years. Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.

Have you ever watched a televised poker tournament? Cameras are embedded in the table, allowing you to see the cards held facedown by each player. Poker lingo is tossed around by TV commentators explaining the action. It is fascinating, at least until the novelty of it all wears off. These poker shows—coupled with the availability of various poker websites—have contributed greatly to the enormous popularity that this card game has enjoyed in recent years.

Join a game, and you'll quickly discover that success is not a matter of "being lucky.'' Successful players bring considerable skills to the table. They certainly have intimate knowledge of the various odds for different hands. They also notice numerous nuanced behaviors on the part of other players, such as facial expressions, nervous twitches, and other body language. These "tells'' increase their odds of guessing what kind of cards the other players hold. Such signs can be detected from various physical behaviors, especially subtle pattern changes in eye movement (stares, glances), eyebrow movement, lip movement (bites, licks, twists), breathing (sighs, grunts), sitting adjustments (back, forward, or to the side), hand and finger positioning, chip stacking practices, card-holding techniques, timing of bet placement, feigned attitudes, and myriad other details.

The very best players, those pros who consistently win tournaments, are highly skilled in such microscope looking. They scrutinize: competitors, studying the scene, detail after detail, looking all around.

Possible Preaching Angles: Bible; Meditation—We should bring the same high quality powers of observation into our study of Scripture and knowing God.

The Telegraph, a British newspaper reported that a flock of over 1,300 sheep "had to be rounded up by police in the Spanish city of Huesca after their shepherd fell asleep." The article continued:

According to city authorities, the police were alerted to the presence of the extremely large flock attempting to negotiate the streets in the center of Huesca at around 4.30am on Tuesday when a local resident dialed Spain's 112 emergency number.

The dozing shepherd was meant to be keeping the animals in check outside the environs of the city while he waited for the clock to strike 7am, when he was due to guide the sheep northwards through Huesca towards Pyrenean uplands where his flock will graze during the hot summer months.

The police eventually found the herder, who was still peacefully slumbering. Together the embarrassed shepherd and police officers were eventually able to extract the sheep from the city and return them to their pastures.

In his book My Name Is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok's main character is an awakening artist, beginning to see the world with a different perspective. The author captures a simple moment at a family dinner from the emerging artist's point of view:

That was the night I began to realize that something was happening to my eyes. I looked at my father and saw lines and planes I had never seen before. I could feel with my eyes. I could feel my eyes moving across the lines around his eyes and into and over the deep furrows on his forehead. He was thirty-five years old, and there were lines on his face and forehead. I could feel the lines with my eyes and feel, too, the long straight flat bridge of his nose and the clear darkness of his eyes and the strong thick curves of the red eyebrows and the thick red hair of his beard graying a little—I saw the stray gray strands in the tangle of hair below his lips. I could feel lines and points and planes. I could feel texture and color …. I felt myself flooded with the shapes and textures of the world around me. I closed my eyes. But I could still see that way inside my head. I was seeing with another pair of eyes that had suddenly come awake.

What if we changed the way we looked at people? What if we paid attention to people with a new set of eyes that "suddenly came awake"? Might we see the helpless and hopeless condition of people with whom we come into contact every day? Noticing may be the first step in bringing someone the good news about Jesus and the kingdom of God … We begin to see others, ourselves, and even God differently. People we never noticed before (because we never paid attention to them) quite suddenly matter to us in ways we can't explain.

Bible scholar N.T. Wright uses the analogy of waking up in the morning for how some people come to Christ through a dramatic, instant conversion and others come to Christ through a gradual conversion:

Waking up offers one of the most basic pictures of what can happen when God takes a hand in someone's life. There are classic alarm-clock stories, Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, blinded by a sudden light, stunned and speechless, discovered that the God he had worshipped had revealed himself in the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth. John Wesley found his heart becoming strangely warm and he never looked back. They and a few others are the famous ones, but there are millions more.

And there are many stories, thought they don't hit the headlines in the same way, of the half-awake and half-asleep variety. Some people take months, years, maybe even decades, during which they aren't sure whether they're on the outside of Christian faith looking in, or on the inside looking around to see if it's real.

As with ordinary waking up, there are many people who are somewhere in between. But the point is that there's such a thing as being asleep, and there's such a thing as being awake. And it's important to tell the difference, and to be sure you're awake by the time you have to be up and ready for action, whatever that action may be.

In the ongoing battle against oversleeping, humanity has devised some clever alarm clocks. But for all their clever designs, most alarm clocks still suffer from a common drawback: the fact that they're not designed for multiple users. When one person's alarm goes off, other people in the room or throughout the house have to wake up too. Most alarm clocks have no way to selectively wake up one person and leave the other person undisturbed. Until now, that is.

Wake is a new breed of alarm that targets individual users and wakes up one sleeper without rousing others. Here's how it works. After it's mounted to the wall above the bed, the device uses an infrared temperature sensor and special body-tracking software to discern where each person is lying (without a camera). When it's time to wake one person up, Wake silently takes aim, rotates into position, and then directs a tight burst of light and sound at their face.

To keep from rousing other sleepers, the device uses a set of parametric speakers capable of focusing sound into a narrow beam. Think of it as a spotlight for noise. If Wake is pointed straight at your head you'll hear it loud and clear, but if you're outside of the beam's small radius, the sound will be extremely faint.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) God calls you to wake up and live the Christian life, don't sleep through it; (2) The voice of God is personal and heard only by each individual, like Paul on the road to Damascus, to young Samuel in his sleep.

In an experiment in London, security firm F-Secure set up on open Wi-Fi network in a busy public area. But there was a hidden, devilish catch. When people connected to the network, they were presented with (the usual) lengthy terms and conditions. Well-hidden was a "Herod Clause," stating that by using this Wi-Fi you were "giving permanent ownership of the user's firstborn child" to F-Secure. Six people clicked through the "Herod Clause" and accepted the terms.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What a potent illustration of the "hidden costs" of so many things and behaviors that we take for granted.

Paul "Bear" Bryant is widely considered to be one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. Bryant's record in 38 years at Maryland, Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Alabama included 323 wins. He also took 29 teams to bowl games and led 15 of his teams to conference championships. In the 1960s and 1970s, no school won more games than Alabama (193-32-5). As one of his colleagues said, "He wasn't just a coach; he was the coach."

John Croyle, an All-American defensive end on the 1973 national championship team, played for the Bear, and was deeply impacted by the man. John recently told me about one of Coach Bryant's pregame speeches.

Coach Bryant paced in front of his assembled team as the band played for the capacity crowd waiting outside in the stadium. He made eye contact with each player as he spoke the following words:

In this game, there are going to be four or five plays that will determine the outcome of this contest. Four or five plays that will swing the momentum toward us, or away from us. I don't know which plays these will be. You don't know which plays these will be. All you can do is go out there and give all that you have on each and every play. If you are doing that on one of those crucial plays, and you catch your opponent giving less, that play will swing things in our direction. And if we rise to the occasion like that, on those four or five plays, we are gonna leave here today a winner.

Possible Preaching Angle: Prayer, Attentiveness, Obedience—Our life is made up of a series of moments. A few of those moments will be absolutely transformative—they will change our life and the lives of others forever. But since we usually don't know which moments will be the "game-changers," the Bible repeatedly urges us to "stay awake," "walk in the light," and "redeem the time."

According to pastor and author John Ortberg, a fictitious manual for Peace Corp volunteers headed for South America offers advice on how to handle a chance encounter with an anaconda (a large type of boa constrictor). This is the list of instructions under the heading "What to Do If Attacked by an Anaconda":

• 1. If you're attacked by an anaconda, do not run; the snake is faster than you are.
• 2. Lie flat on the ground.
• 3. Put your arms tight at your sides and your legs tight against one another.
• 4. The snake will begin to climb over your body.
• 5. Do not panic.
• 6. The snake will begin to swallow you from the feet end.
• 7. Step 6 will take a long time.
• 8. After awhile, slowly and with as little movement as possible, reach down, take your knife, and very gently slide it into the snake's mouth. Then suddenly sever the snake's head.
• 9. Be sure your knife is sharp.
• 10. Be sure you have your knife.

John Ortberg quotes these humorous instructions and then makes a serious point: "You never really know what curves life will throw at you, what's lurking around the corner … But when you are called, and you will be called, you need to know what to do. If you wait until a crisis hits, because it will hit, you have waited too long. You need to be prepared first."