Posts Tagged: sleeplessness

“ON BEING A SURROGATE FATHER TO A SMALL BALL OF FUR”

On October 27, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“Oh God, please help me to become the man that my dog thinks that I already am!”  (The prayer of an honest man.)

“Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like ourselves. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.’

 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

 Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.’ ” (Genesis 1:26-28)

We now have a very small puppy.  I feel that old pride, fear, and solicitude that I used to feel for our children when they were babies.  I wish that I had continued to feel those feelings, and that I had acted accordingly as our children grew.

Our six-week-and-one-day-old puppy is going to help me get up early in the morning on a more consistent basis.  She awakened me—and my wife, of course—at about 3:18 a.m.  So, she is with me now in the study—the dog, that is.  (My wife has gone back to bed.)  The dog is sleeping in her cage, while I work at my desk and listen to WGUC.  3:18 a.m. is early, even for me.

Even though my wife did all of the heavy lifting with our children, I do remember some pretty sleepless nights.  Or, at least, some nights with sporadic sleep!  There is a reason why young people have babies.  Perhaps only young people should have puppies as well.

Our puppy is reacquainting me with some very basic, uncomfortable truths about myself.  The main reminder is this: I am a very selfish person.  This is not exactly a new revelation.  The truth is this: I have much more in common with our puppy than I have with you, God.  My dog and I are both your creatures.  We are both limited and full of ourselves.

God, you have made us human beings in your image.  Perhaps our rulership over creation is actually a matter of loving creation, and helping the rest of creation to become more than it is.  Perhaps (as C.S. Lewis thought), we are to raise even our pets to a higher level.

Perhaps.  But in order to do that, we/I need to be and become our own selves.  We/I need to be like you.  That was the original promise (or fact?), according to Genesis 1:27.  The original lie was that we needed to disobey God in order to really become like God (Genesis 3:5).  The promise (or fact?) was that we were like you.  Help us/me to live in the promise/fact, and not to buy into the lie.

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SERVING GOD, WITH SLEEP OR WITHOUT

On January 7, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

I did not sleep well last night.  I am reminded of two approaches to serving God.  One comes from the New Testament, the other from Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim.

Paul, in defending his apostleship, boasts that he had served God “through many sleepless nights” (2 Corinthians 11:27).

I’m afraid that I don’t always use my sleeplessness to serve God or others.  Instead, I use sleeplessness to serve as an excuse for being a self-serving so and so!  (Truth hurts, but it also heals.)

But the question is, what will I do with my sleeplessness today?  Will I be pleasant to people, or will be a member of that huge clan called “the Whiner Family?”  Will I seek to glorify God, no matter how well or poorly I’ve slept?

Then, there is another story that goes in the opposite direction.  It is the story of Rabbi Shmelke, one of the early Hasidim, who lived in Nikolsburg (a town in what is now called Moravia, near Austria).  Rabbi Shmelke lived from 1726-1778.  One of the wonderful stories about him involves sleep.

“Rabbi Shmelke did not want to interrupt his studies for too long a time, and so he always slept sitting up, his head resting on his arm.  In his fingers he held a lit candle which roused him when it guttered and the flame touched his hand.  When Rabbi Elimelekh visited him, and recognized the power of the holiness which was still locked within him, he prepared a couch for him and with great difficulty persuaded him to lie down for a little while.  The he closed and shuttered the windows.  Rabbi Shmelke slept until broad daylight.  It did not take him long to notice this, but he was not sorry he had slept, for he was filled with a hitherto unknown sunny clearness.  He went to the House of Prayer and prayed before the congregation as usual.  But to the congregation it seemed that they had never heard him before.  They were entranced and uplifted by the manifest power of his holiness.  When he recited the verses about the Red Sea, they gathered up the hems of their kaftans for fear the waves towering to the left and right might wet them with salty foam.  Later Shmelke said to Elimelekh: ‘Not until this day did I know that one can serve God with sleep’” (Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, volume 1, pp. 187-188).

So, according to Paul, God can be served and glorified in, and presumably by, sleeplessness.  According to Rabbi Shmelke, God can be served in, and presumably by sleep.  Who is right?

I am rather fond of the saying, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”  The truth is this: Everything, when submitted to God, can glorify God.  God can and will use everything to bless us.  We can also use everything to serve God and others.

The only question is this: Will we choose to do so?

No, on second thought, that is not the question.  The question is this: Will I choose to do so?

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