| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 13 |
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When the privilege of work is interrupted by the coming of the night, God has another blessing ready for us – the blessing of sleep. One may figure out with a fair show of mathematical certainty that it is a waste of time to spend one third of each twenty four hours in the unconsciousness of idleness of sleep. But these hours which seem to be lost, in which we appear to be doing nothing, bring us new gifts from God. An old version renders the Psalm verse thus, “He giveth His beloved in sleep.” We lie down with our vitality exhausted in the toils, tasks, and struggles of the day. We could not have gone another hour. Then, while we sleep, God comes to us in the silence and refills the emptied fountains. It is really a new creation that takes place in us while we sleep a nightly miracle of renewal and restoration. We die, as it were, and are made to live again.
So night, which seems to us a waste of precious hours, is a time of God’s working in us. He draws the veil of darkness that none may see Him when He visits us in loving ministry. He folds us in the unconsciousness of sleep that we ourselves may not know when He comes or how He gives to us the marvelous blessings. When then morning returns and we awake strong and filled with new life, we learn that God has visited us though we knew it not.
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