ZZZZZZZZ

I love my naps. I come from a long line of nappers, and I've attempted to pass this rich heritage on to my children. (One of them caught on immediately...the other has always been rather stubborn about it.) On my days off, I even plan my errands and appointments around my nap time. I maintain that when life (or the cat) dictates that you rise at 5:00 a.m., you deserve one! While some view naps as a luxury, I see them as a matter of mental survival. There's nothing so frustrating as being at an evening function, realizing my brain is "logging off", and knowing there's nothing I can do about it...other than pray that any contribution made to the discussion has some degree of sensibility. Some of you are now probably thinking, "Aha, that explains everything!" : )

All that rambling to say that getting enough sleep has always been important to me, but it wasn't until recently that I started thinking about the theology of sleep. C. J. Mahaney has written: "God could have created us without a need for sleep. But He chose to build this need within us, and there's a spiritual purpose for it. Each night, as I confront my need again for sleep, I'm reminded that I'm a dependent creature. I am not self-sufficient. I am not the Creator. There is only One who 'will neither slumber nor sleep' (Pslam 121:4), and I am not that One." More recently, author Lauren Winner wrote in her article titled "Sleep Therapy" (click for article):

"The unarguable demands that our bodies make for sleep are a good reminder that we are mere creatures, not the Creator. For it is God and God alone who "neither slumbers nor sleeps." Of course, the Creator has slept, another startling reminder of the radical humility he embraced in becoming incarnate. He took on a body that, like ours, was finite and contingent and needed sleep. To push ourselves to go without sleep is, in some sense, to deny our embodiment, to deny our fragile incarnations—and perhaps to deny the magnanimous poverty and self-emptying that went into his Incarnation."

The article is worthwhile reading...I'm convinced, and now I'm off for a little sleep therapy. ;)