When You Can't Sleep

Many things can rob you of sleep, but there are some perennial culprits. 

Stress
Grief
Pain
Fear

I don't know what it was for Asaph, the author of Psalm 77, but he put words to a feeling that perhaps you've had in the night:

I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me.
In the day of my trouble I seek the LORD;
in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;

Trouble has a way of running off with our sleep, the way a thief runs off with valuables thrown in a bag during a late-night break-in. Realizing your valuables are missing, all you're left to do is cry out and reach out.

How bad can it get? Bad enough that Asaph names something we tend to think is at best, impolite but at worst, an outright sin:

my soul refuses to be comforted.
When I remember God, I moan;
when I meditate, my spirit faints.

This is why I appreciate Psalm 77 so much. Asaph refuses to be comforted. More than that, in trying to do what seems to be the right thing - calling on God - he moans. He tries to get his mind and heart in the right place, but when he does it moves him to a spiritual exhaustion.

Sometimes life can wear us down so much that it's exhausting to even call on God. When you're tired enough to be sleeping, you're tired enough that you can't get up and write. You can't get up and read. There's no help from any kind of electronic screen either. But no one else is awake for you to talk with. Even if they were awake, what would you say?

The only person awake to listen to Asaph is God, and Asaph is honest. God doesn't feel quite like the person he wants to talk to in this moment:

You hold my eyelids open;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

Asaph helps me understand, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who carried him as he wrote, that I don't have to try to over-spiritualize my tossing and turning late at night when trouble feels so present that I can't imagine that morning will come again.

Asaph seems to think that God is a vandal who broke in and took his sleep. He says, "You hold my eyelids open." It's as if he's complaining, "I wanted to rest up so I can face my troubles tomorrow, but here you are, Lord, holding my eyelids open." Sleep deprivation is actually a form of torture used in times past against prisoners of war. No wonder Asaph is so troubled he cannot utter any words.

Does he mean that against God ultimately? No, I don't think so. But you don't know until you read the rest of the psalm. It seems like he's expressing the feeling in order to move past it. He's putting it out there in the strongest possible way. Maybe you and I would pray it like a question, "God, are you holding my eyelids open? The trouble I'm facing is hard to talk about with you." Instead, Asaph puts it out there like an accusation: "You are sovereign. I can't sleep. It feels like you're doing this to me on purpose."

But after the accusation, Asaph does find himself able to speak. He makes a request:

Let me remember my song in the night; let me meditate in my heart.

From a hard-sounding accusation, now to a humble and holy request. In the night, let me sing my song. He assumes the LORD knows which one Asaph is talking about. That song, LORD, the one that would help me in the midst of trouble, let it come to my mind right now when I'm too tired, too worn out by trouble, to sing. 

When he follows that by saying, "Let me meditate in my heart," it teaches us something about Christian meditation. It is filling your mind with something helpful. Other forms of meditation invite us to empty our minds, to push things out and away, to find solace in - well, in nothingness, it seems. But God's people meditate in order to put something in our minds, something that will face our trouble rather than trying not to think about it.

Asaph's meditation puts five questions in his mind:

Will the LORD spurn forever, and never again be favorable?
Has his steadfast love forever ceased?
Are his promises at an end for all time?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he in anger shut up his compassion?

The expected answer to the question is no. But if that is going to be the right answer to the question, then Asaph is going to need some proof, both for himself and for his readers. What is his proof that God's love and promises are not at an end forever?

Writing before the time of Christ, this Old Testament poet appeals back to the greatest salvation story in the Old Testament, the Exodus. First, Asaph says that he will appeal to the aged wisdom of "the right hand of the Most High." An appeal to God's right hand is an appeal to his power. Then he goes on to describe poetically the story of how God used his power to save his people by parting the waters of the Red Sea so they could escape Egypt.

Asaph's logic is that if God could bring his whole people through the waters - and his footprints weren't seen there - then he could take care of Asaph's trouble in the night, even when Asaph couldn't see how.

At the bank of the Red Sea, God's people were sure to die. There was no escape from Pharaoh and his army. This would be the end. But then the sea was parted, and they walked through on dry land. Impossible! Yet if you trust the God who could bring his people life from the midst of certain death, then Asaph could believe it on a personal level for himself. 

But what about God's people since the writing of the New Testament? What salvation event do we meditate on and appeal to as proof in our long nights and hard questions?

There is a greater exodus, and Jesus is the greater Moses who leads us through it. 

Jesus did not part the waters of any sea, but he was torn apart in the violence of death on a cross. The waters of the Red Sea did not wash over God's people then, but Jesus' blood washes over his people now. If God can take on human flesh, suffer, die, and rise in order that you could be forgiven of your sins - then you can know that the trouble you face in the night is not a trouble you face alone. 

It's not a trouble you face because God doesn't love you. It's a trouble that God will bring you through because he loves you.

Not even death can take away his love for you. It can't take his presence from you. It can't separate his people from him (or from each other) because of the promise of resurrection.  If death is the worst trouble that we can grieve or fear in the night, then what happens to all the griefs and fears that are lesser? We can trust his steadfast love in the midst of those too.

I appreciate that Asaph ends his psalm where he does, at the end of the great salvation event. He doesn't tie a bow on whatever he was facing that night. Morning came. Perhaps he was still wrestling the whole next day, week, month, or year. But the witness of this psalm is that a day came when he was able to look back on his trouble and remember something that moved him through those long nights with the promise of his presence and steadfast love.