Sleep is a Gift

Sleep - apparently, we aren't getting enough of it. According to this Time article, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that a third of all Americans are getting less than the recommended minimum of 7 hours of sleep. In a separate study, research has shown that a lack of sleep is linked to depression and higher mortality rates. Then I read this Harvard Business Review blog post on why sleep is more important than food

This sleep crisis hit home for me last week. In a men's small group meeting, a few of my friends confessed how getting a full night's sleep had become extremely challenging. One friend told of how the combination of health challenges and anxieties can get the better of him to the point that he sleeps only 4-5 hours a night.

What should be so natural and easy is becoming so difficult for many of us, entangled in cares of life and a myriad of challenges ranging from physical ailments to chronic anxieties. It also reminded me that sleep is a gift - one that we often take for granted until it becomes difficult.

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil;

for he gives his beloved sleep. Psalm 127:2

God gives... we receive. It's that simple, yet profound. Let's pray for that we might receive the gift of sleep rom our Creator who knows that we were made to rest.