By Jasmine Koh

The quote goes, ‘once beaten twice shy’. Funnily enough, I’m rephrasing it to ‘twice beaten thrice shy’. Two episodes of falling ill over three months made me realised the importance of sleep. Both times, I’m confined to bed, left with the single most important thing I had sacrificed for months – sleep. 

I thought a lot about sleep the second time I was somewhat bedridden. I slept for 16 hours straight, and woke up feeling like I finally caught up on sleep. With my job demands, my routine of catching five to six hours of sleep per night left me completely exhausted and depleted. I thought about why sleep was essential, why God mandated humans to sleep, and why I wrestled so hard to submit sleep to God. 

Psalm 127:2 beautifully writes, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” Sleep is God’s gift of peace to us. Sleep is God’s loving reminder that we need not be anxious. Sleep is an invitation to put our trust in Him. 

Very often, sleep is not a priority for me because the tasks at hand require my immediate attention. I am greatly comforted to know that sleep is my response to God’s invitation to trust Him. Even when it seems like things are not within my control, I am at peace knowing God remains sovereign. There is a time for working, a time for resting and a time for submitting to God. 

Recounting these two episodes, I realised how much I took sleep for granted. In plain truth, I was vying for that position of ‘God’ by trying to catch up on work and delay sleep. God has greatly humbled me through something as ordinary as sleep. Thank God for his gift of peace that we can continue to rely on.