“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 , NRSV).”
Scholars date the Book of Ecclesiastes anywhere from 450 to 230 B.C. (BCE). But contemporary minds associate it more with the pop culture landscape in the 1960s thanks to The Byrds’ version of Pete Seeger’s song, Turn, Turn, Turn, which charted to No. 1 in 1965. The only words they added to the original scriptural text were “I swear it’s not too late.” If the band leader, Jim McGuinn, who has become an evangelical Christian, was to do a rewrite version today, I would ask him to add one more line – “a time to sleep, and a time to be awake.”
I’m not talking about alarm setting, shift work, or Christmas morning. I’m referring to admonitions regarding sleep and wakefulness found in the New Testament. Skeptical, are you? Bear with me.
Out of Sync
Mt 8: 23-27 is the account of Jesus and his disciples in a boat when “a gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves.” This group of grown men that included at least four experienced fishermen by trade, were so terrified that they cried out to the Lord, “We are perishing!” By contrast, Jesus was asleep – apparently exhausted from the day’s ministry to the crowds but concomitantly secure in the Father’s protection. And rather than showing compassion for these veterans of the lake, he chides them for their lack of faith! Lesson number one: the time to sleep – when you are secure in God’s love. Genuine faith in God gives us rest even in the midst of the storms of life (also Mk. 4: 35-41; Lk. 8: 22-25).
If you’re having any trouble identifying storms right now that have generated a fearful appeal to God that “we are perishing!?” I have three words for you: COVID pandemic, political vitriol, and gun violence. Okay three compound words (sort of). The words Jesus spoke on the boat still resonate: “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?”
What about lesson number two: a time to be awake? I find in the Scriptures at least three reasons to be awake.
Eyes Wide Open
First – awake for prayer. The need for less sleep accompanies aging (at least that’s what I’ve been told). All right, so I have firsthand experience. So, like it or not, I’m up before the sun rises, which gives me the opportunity to start the day with prayer. But Jesus, a young man in his thirties, wasn’t wakened by his body, but by his will. When more prayer was needed than hours in a day provided, he pulled an all-nighter. Luke 6: 12-13: “Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he named apostles.” He didn’t crash after breakfast. He wasn’t grouchy from lack of sleep. He made one of the most important decisions of his ministry and selected the men who would carry on his mission and found his church. There is a time when prayer must supplant sleep.
St. Thomas More conveyed a similar message in his writings while awaiting his execution in the Tower of London fifteen hundred years later. “Everyone has sufficient grounds to be afraid that he may grow weary under his burden and give in” to adversity. But this very tendency should actually cause us “to rouse ourselves and wake up to virtuous living”; it should make us more and more convinced of our absolute need for the habit of prayer (St. Thomas More quotes with editorial comments by Gerard Wegemer).
Second – awake for spiritual battle and endurance.
Nodding Off
Jesus alerted his apostles to it in Luke’s account immediately before his passion commenced. “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy…Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man (Lk. 21:34, 36).”
The early Christians were reminded of it in 1 Peter 5:8: “Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. (NAB)
And Thomas More underscored the corporate nature of it. “I think we would not be far wrong if we were to fear that the time approaches when the Son of Man, Christ, will be betrayed into the hands of sinners as often as we see an imminent danger that the mystical Body of Christ, the Church of Christ, namely, the Christian people, will be brought to ruin at the hands of wicked men…How could it be anything but disgraceful for Christians to snore while other Christians are in danger?” There he is in the Tower of London facing his own death, and he’s imploring others to wake up from their snoring indifference towards the suffering of their brothers and sisters!
Jesus is in agony to the end of the world. We must not sleep during that time.
Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 553. (17th century)
Third – awake for our call to holiness
Go Time
“It is now the hour for you to wake from sleep, for our salvation is closer than when we first accepted the faith. The night is far spent; the day draws near. Let us cast off deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us live honorably as in daylight; not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh (Rom. 13: 11b -14, NAB).”
God is timeless, but we are not. The clock is ticking towards the end of our short span on this earth. Are we awake and alert to the need to be transformed in Christ every day of our lives, or are we content to sleep through the alarm and remain in the darkness of our sin?
Back to Ecclesiastes and “an appointed time for everything”. The key is knowing what time it is. The apostles had trouble with that. In the boat, they were awake with fear when Jesus was asleep in the security of his Father’s love. In Gethsemane, they were asleep filled with food and wine when Jesus was awake with a “heart filled with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34). On Mount Tabor, they were asleep, but woke up long enough for Peter to mumble the wrong thing to the transfigured Christ who was more than awake with Moses and Elijah.
If only we could know Jesus’ schedule and follow it with him every day (and night). Lord, hear my prayer.
