Psalm 77: Can't Sleep

In the night …. you cant sleep; your mind is a whirl with things you did or failed to do; words you had said, or wished you had spoken; worries; broken hopes; the pains and problems of life refuse you sleep. We’ve all been there. The nights when you cant sleep. Even those who love the Lord God, the Holy Trinity, cant sleep.

Sometimes perhaps as Christians we may feel we’re not supposed to have troublesome nights. But if so we deceive ourselves. We are Christ’s people yet we still live in a fallen world, we still face a life of challenges, we are still imperfect, prone to mistakes and regrets.

Like Asaph, the writer of the psalm, struck by troubles we cry aloud to God, we moan, we meditate, our spirits faint, for our troubles are worsened by the sense that we have or may have let God down. We are so troubled we cannot speak – we cant even pray.

We remember good days with the Lord, but now our glad remembrance turns to worrying fears: has the Lord turned away from me? Have I fallen out of His favour. And you blame yourself, only adding to your stress: Is it your grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed.

Then Asaph does what we all need to do – to move from our self to our God. To remember who He is; to remind ourselves of His deep commitment to His people; how He has acted to save His people in the midst of their perils – so he remembers the crossing of the Red sea, and probably also the crossing of the Jordan – deadly waters through which the Lord made a way for His people, the first an escape from the army of Pharaoh, the second an entry into the promised land. We as a nation held days of prayer in the 2nd world war, and in the waters of the Channel the Lord acted to help us – providing calm seas for the miracle of Dunkirk; providing an unexpected break in the weather for the D-Day landings.

Above all as God’s people we remember the Lord Jesus Christ who strode through the waters of death, rescuing us from the dominion of darkness, bringing us home into life with the Father and the Spirit and Himself in the new creation. The Good Shepherd is with us.

Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations in his grief over the fall of Judah to Babylon. These are some words he gave there in c3 which are assurances for us in the days of our troubles: I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.… The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him … no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though He brings grief, He will show compassion, so great is His unfailing love.