The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the LORD has made them both. Love not sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread. – Proverbs 20:12-13
The Bible tells us often to wake up:
Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame (1 Corinthians 15:34).
[F]or anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you (Ephesians 5:14).
On the other hand, sleep can be a good thing.
Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. 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 (Psalm 127:1-2).
There is more than one kind of sleep and more than one kind
of bread. The sleep against which the
proverb warns is the closing of our eyes and ears to the spiritual nature of
our existence. It is to dream that we
are mere primates, clever apes and intelligent beasts. That we can see we are more than animals is a
gift of God. Our spiritual senses
testify to the Spirit just as our eyes are proof of the existence of
light.
If we close our eyes to the true nature of our existence, we
will live impoverished lives, always hungering for some missing nutrient, no
matter how much bread and beef and beer we consume.
If we open our eyes, however, we will find, to our
everlasting joy, that the Bread of Life is ours and in abundance. All the true, honorable, righteous, and
lovely desires of the spirit within us will find satisfaction and fulfillment.
The world lives in a nightmare, somnolent and
senseless. Like all dreamers, their
situations, motivations, and actions are often bizarre and irrational. When we are surrounded by such, we may come
to wonder if we are not the sleepers. A
few minutes of the evening news is usually sufficient to convince me
otherwise.
