Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep...

 

Do you remember this classic children's prayer? The most common version comes from The New England Primer.

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my Soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

Various editions of this prayer have come into being over the years—I suspect because the thought of a child dying in his or her sleep was not a pleasant one to think about. Mind you, back in the 1700s when the original was written those kinds of tragic events would have been a distinct possibility.

But the prayer, one I prayed as a child, came to mind this morning as I read Psalm 132. In this prayer the psalmist makes a vow to the Lord not to sleep until the place of worship has been built for Him. Here's how it goes:

"I will not enter my house or get into my bed, I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob". 

Most of us have no physical sanctuaries for the worship of God to build so such a vow would not enter our minds. But what did enter my mind was a slight variation on the theme of "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray..." You see, before we go to sleep at night what better way to clear our minds and hearts of the cares of the day, of the anxieties and fears that pursue us, of the multitude of tasks needing to be done that rob us of rest, of the "dirt" that we may have accumulated during the preceding hours, than to "find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob".

What better time, than just before turning off the light, to read the Word and pray, depositing the day and all that it has brought into our lives, into the hands of Almighty God. In this nightly habit we make ourselves, as temples of the Spirit of God, fit places for Him to dwell.

Such a simple thing, but then, how often does the answer to straightening the knots that make up our often complicated lives lie in the simplest of things?