Throughout my first year at university, I struggled to go to bed on time. I would work late and when I returned to my room I would spend hours on YouTube and Facebook and the like, before finally closing the screen, tired and distracted, at two o’clock in the morning.
It fed into a miserable cycle. I would wake late and work unproductively, and finish late again. Night after night, there was something stopping me from breaking the cycle and going straight to bed when I finished working. I would turn on my phone or laptop, fighting off sleep to indulge in the blue light of triviality.
There was the simple addiction to a screen, which still plagues me today. But looking back, there was a further cause which was not so clear at the time. After hours of frustrating work, I was finishing each day unsatisfied. I had not experienced or achieved enough that day; to sleep would be to consign yet another 24 hours to the growing heap of wasted days. I do not know exactly what I was looking for, nor what possessed me to look for it in Internet rabbit-holes. But every night I was searching for substance, and it had a harmful grip on me.
Tonight, before I go to bed, I shall say by God’s grace two prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. One shall be the Collect for Aid against all Perils:
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.
With this, I commit my helpless, sleeping body to the Lord, and pray that He might watch over me. But before that, I shall pray the ancient words of Simeon – the Nunc Dimittis:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.
Whereas I commit the night into the Lord’s hands with the Third Collect, here I commit to him the day which has passed. It is an expression of utter satisfaction with what has come before, such that the day can be relinquished with thankfulness to the God who gave it; and so may I sleep.
This satisfaction is not with what I have accomplished. When I reflect on what I have achieved today, I can only confess that I have left undone those things which I ought to have done, and I have done those things which I ought not to have done. But in our rest we share in God’s rest. As my friend has written about elegantly here, God’s rest shows His satisfaction in what He has completed. When we pray, ‘Mine eyes have seen thy salvation,’ we share that satisfaction in His work.
The depth of this experience is seen in the example of Simeon. Having spent all his earthly life waiting for the Messiah, he needed only hold the promised baby in his arms and he was content, not just to sleep but to die. His prayer to God is intimate, but it is also tremendous in its scope. This child would bring redemption for all peoples, light to the Gentiles and glory to Israel. Rightly do we speak of glory without end.
If I have confessed my sins and received the forgiveness of God, then the day’s events – or lack thereof – do not compare to this salvation. I have seen the Son of God crucified for me and risen in victory over sin and death. I need experience nothing else to lay down my weary head, satisfied. This salvation does not cure all my sorrows or ills immediately, but I know that they are contained in Christ’s resurrection triumph, and I can add nothing more in this twilight hour.
One day, I will depart this world a final time and enter my final sleep. What will be my feeling then? Will I have regret at what I have failed to do? Such a worry is sometimes used to gird Christians into faithful action; but I trust that I will not feel regret. For I have seen the Lord’s salvation; I have been baptised into it, and I trust that I will have fed on it from now until then. There can be no disappointment in such a life.
This is not to say that we should be lax about what we do with our days. Why do we rest if not to wake and live in action and service? But it is the refreshed soul which will do so with most joy and vigour, not grasping onto every passing moment, but living in the full freedom of the resurrected Christ.
I do not know whether the difficulty I described at the beginning of this article is a common one. However, we all look for substance in our lives; for love and strength and beauty; in particular, for something outside ourselves, to save us from ourselves. We shall never be able to sleep easily until we can say to Jesus Christ our God: ‘Mine eyes have seen thy salvation.’
The Second Discourseman
The Four Discoursemen 