Picture this: it’s December in Boston, two thirty in the morning. The sun set ten hours ago, but you’re still awake, wilting under the fluorescents of the library. The dining hall’s bottomless coffee is losing its effect, and as you rifle through your study guides, I’m sure it hasn’t crossed your mind that you’re imitating God. But you’ve forgotten these words from Psalm 121: Behold, the guardian of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps.
Now, of course, God doesn’t need to sleep; you (eventually) do. But remembering this verse might be helpful for finals season, since we tend to write off our late-night study sessions as being somehow separate from our “good life”—the life where we want to be good people, doing good things, serving a good God. The fourth floor of O’Neill past midnight is not a part of that life, or at least that’s how we seem to consider it. But we need to realize that God is equally attentive to every minute of the day, and some of the greatest stories in our tradition took place in the lost hours of the night—in other words, even in your exhaustion, you can edge closer to the eternal.
Stay with us, for evening approaches, and the day has faded; this is the plea of Rheinberger’s beautiful hymn, “Abendlied.” All we know about God shows us that He does, in fact, stay with us when the darkness comes. He even came to us this way, in the middle of a long night in Bethlehem, sanctifying forever those parts of the night that used to be terrifying. How can we be scared of the dark anymore, since He was born in it? As you flip to the next page of your textbook, checking the time on your phone, you can say a quick prayer of gratitude—This was the hour You came to me.
Quite a few people were awake the night of the Nativity. The shepherds were working, too, keeping guard over their sheep. They may not have wanted to be up at that hour, but because they were, they could raise their eyes from the earth to see the sky fill with angels, and could hear the silence of the night shattered by the clamor of Heaven. Later on, the Wise Men came to Bethlehem by way of a star; it was only under the cover of darkness that their path became clear.
As you study, you won’t see crowds of cherubim (if you do, let me know). But night is a holy time, even if you spend it at your desk—morning was touched by the glory of Easter, and night by the Nativity. There is no hour unknown to the God who made the hours. He wills each moment into being, so how could He not be present in each? It is in Time that we work out our salvation, and so every instant is blessed.
Think of that dark hour when Peter walked on water. The disciples were at sea in the middle of a violent storm. “During the fourth watch of the night,” writes Matthew. “[Jesus] came toward them, walking on the sea” (14:25). When Peter asks to walk on the water as proof, Christ lets him do so.
But when Peter felt the strong wind, “he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’” (26-31).
Maybe this story feels true to your late nights of stress and sleeplessness. Far from being asleep or stagnant, Christ was active, pulling Peter out as he sank into the black waters. In that fourth watch, could the Psalmist have imagined a more spectacular scene when he wrote, Let watchmen count on daybreak, and Israel on the Lord (Ps 130)?
Finally, and most dramatically, never forget the Agony in the Garden, a worse all-nighter than you or I will ever pull. The night before the Crucifixion, Christ stayed awake praying, and was so distressed that he sweat blood. None of His friends could keep from falling asleep. The path through a difficult night is a path He’s already paved for you with His own tears and His own sorrow; no matter what the next morning brings, you can rest in confidence—He has brought the night under His command.
God doesn’t forget you in the forgotten hours, so remember Him, too, and you can share them together. And as soon as you can—get some rest.
Featured image courtesy of Lily Monster via Flickr
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