Re-thinking sleep

My dear wife bought me a "smart" watch last year for Christmas. The gizmo keeps track of lots of things: e.g., how much water is consumed, how many flights of stairs are traversed, in addition to keeping the time. One feature evaluates the quality of sleep -- how much of it, in other words, was motionless. Given my age and assorted medical conditions, my nighttime siesta is often restless. Getting three hours of unbroken R.E.M. dozing is a better-than-average night for me.

Sleep, perchance to dream, indeed.

I wonder how well Jesus of Nazareth slept. Did he get eight hours a night? Did he snore? Did he have bad dreams? The New Testament is silent about the Lord's quality of slumber. A pastor will likely aver that these are non-essential details -- that what we are given in the New Testament is all we need to know about Him. This argument carries weight. The men who wrote the accounts of His life were not writing an intimate biography of the man. We are given His words and deeds. Understood. The picture of the Master is incomplete, yes, but it is enough. No argument. But accepting the dearth of information doesn't stop my wondering. I find myself lamenting that the writers wrote such spare prose about the man whose life helps me make sense of my own.

With that said, we are told some things. We are informed He was an early riser: "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed" (Mark 1:35). He also prayed in the evening (Matthew 14:23) and occasionally His prayerful activity took all night (Luke 6:12). Even a cursory reading of the Gospels reveals a Jesus who was frequently willing to truncate His sleep in order to communicate with His Heavenly Father. We are told that while His disciples slept on the night of His arrest in Gethsemane, Jesus stayed awake to pray (Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22).

If we drill down on these texts, we can pick up something incomparably important for our everyday lives. To wit: sleep, as important as it is, is not as vital as prayer. Wow. You'll never see that advice in a television commercial.

It's been my take on the Christian faith that Jesus is the ultimate yardstick. It is my task, and that of each person who trusts in Him, to measure our lives by His example. If my yardstick metaphor has merit, then no one stacks up well by comparison. I just don't do the things He did. And if I discover myself to be far from God, maybe it's time to start emulating Him rather than complaining to Him.

Bill Moyers, the longtime PBS host, once opined that the great journey of the 19th century was the journey westward, into the then-unexplored territory beyond the Mississippi River. The great journey of the 20th century, he offered, was the journey to outer space. But the great journey of our century, the 21st, the renowned journalist said, will be the journey within -- to examine our own spirits.

Prayer, contemplation, mindful meditation -- perhaps it is time to return to this spiritual discipline in order to find our footing with God. Maybe it's time to create what Baptists like to call "quiet time" with the Lord. That much is debatable; it's an opinion. What isn't up for discussion is that Jesus gave up sleep to pray.

If prayer was that important to Him, then...