FROM A TO ZZZZZ

I could attribute it to the pandemic's disruption of “normal life,” or to old age, but I have my share of nights when it's hard to get to sleep or stay asleep. I try to avoid the pill solutions (like melatonin, although it can be helpful) and opt for a warm cup of milk (in the dark) and a cure I call “A to ZZZZZ.” It's one way that Psalm 127:2 works out for me: “He grants sleep to those He loves.”

Years ago, I'd claim that verse in the middle of the night when a hungry infant didn't care if I got eight solid. Typically, after a feeding, I'd collapse right back to slumberland. But with age and the burden of life's myriad concerns (yes, even COVID), I've needed a new way to ease back to slumber. And for me, it's a practice of praying through the names and attributes of God. As I focus on Him and His help and goodness, some of the concerns and worries that keep stirring me awake fade away.

My prayer notebook has a section titled “Attributes” in which I have jotted, by letter of the alphabet, words for the names and attributes of God. It's helpful in praising Him during devotional times. But when sleep eludes at night, I opt for memory rather than turning on the light. In the darkness, I simply focus, in A to Z order, on ways that God is faithful and has sheltered and helped me in times of need.

For “A,” it might be “ You are ABLE,” from 2 Corinthians 9:8: “And God is ABLE to make all grace abound to you.” It's also in Jude 24 and Daniel 3:07. And it's my paraphrase of Psalm 138:8, “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me,” which I claimed in one of the lowest points of my life. It was natural for me to add “ABLE,” for “the Lord is ABLE to fulfill his purpose for me,” as I had certainly run out of options. I had a freshly-minted master's degree and couldn't find a job. As a 31-year-old single, I couldn't go back home to Mom and Dad's to wait things out; they had both died the previous year. Then, just days before I had to vacate college housing, no place to go, I got a job offer and provision for temporary housing. That situation and many others come to mind as my heart recalls the times that God was ABLE and made a way forward for me.

Another word, the Hebrew “Adonai” title for God, as One who has power and authority (found some 300 times in the Bible). Or it might be “Abba,” the familiar, fatherly title for God. Or “Abounding in love” (Psalm 86:5, 13), “Advocate” (1 John 2:1),“Almighty” (Rev. 4:7, Psalm 91:1, Isaiah 47:4), “Anchor” (Hebrews 6:19) “Alpha and Omega,” “Awesome” (Daniel 9:4).

Some alphabet letters have creative possibilities. “Q” sends me to queller of storms, quick, quicken-er (Psalm 80:18 KJV), quiet in his love (Zephaniah 3:17). “Z” is zealous—for which I recall “The zeal of the Lord will accomplish this” (found in both 2 Kings 19:31 and Isaiah 9:7).

In the silence and dark of the night, it is a precious time. The problems that try to keep me awake will still be there in the morning. But in the dim of a nearby nightlight, rays of hope illuminate my heart as I focus on the Lord and seek to praise and honor all He is.

Paul concluded his second letter to the Thessalonians: “Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you” (2 Thessalonians 3:18). By turning times of insomnia into times of focusing on God's infinite and intimate character, He often blesses me with peace that leads again to rest.

The internet offers many lists of ABC prayers. Here is one: Attributes of God From A-Z | ThePreachersWord

Bed-making as a sacred act

As I made my bed this morning, I thought how this has been an unquestioned habit all my life. I also consider it a sacred discipline. It’s acknowledging and appreciating God’s gifts of a bed, blankets to keep me warm, and a room to sleep in. It’s remembering how “He grants sleep to those He loves” (Psalm 127:2), and then, as I awaken, how He also offers the new day to live out my love for Him.


Even at my lowest time financially--when I slept borrowed mattress on the floor of someone’s bedroom, a cardboard box for my “night stand”—I thanked God for a bed. I never went through the nightmare recently endured by family friends. Short on cash, they decided to buy some bunk beds at a yard sale. They didn’t know the mattresses had bed buds. The infestation eventually cost them $4,000 in cleanup.

Making my bed daily also recognizes that He is a God of order. It’s a marker for caring for my possessions and seeing them as gifts from God. How many millions sleep in despairing conditions?

In recounting her imprisonment and persecution under the Nazis, Corrie ten Boom also reminded us of the blessing of having a bed. From her book The Hiding Place, and the film based on it, we have chilling descriptions of not having what many of us take for granted. After her arrest, Nazis detained her in a dirty local prison. Then she, her sister and hundreds of others were crammed into filthy trains and transported to the feared Ravensbruck concentration camp.

They were first herded into an open-sided canopy with a straw floor full of lice. Then they went to Barracks 8, five women to a bed, where they heard the constant screams of women being punished in an adjacent building. Finally came Barracks 28, where 1,400 women were crammed into space intended for 400. They slept on square piers stacked three high, their foul straw mats full of fleas.

Upon her miraculous release (a clerk’s error), she traveled three grueling days by train home to Holland, a shadow of herself. Checking into a Christian hospital, she savored a warm bath. Nurses gently dressed her in clean clothing. Taken to a bedroom, Corrie delighted in its colors. “And the bed!” she wrote in her book Tramp for the Lord. “Delightfully soft and clean with thick woolen blankets.”

The simple, personal discipline of bed-making can go along with saying, “I’m checking into this new day, Lord. It is fresh and new, a gift from you. Yesterday, there were attitudes and actions that were messy and sinful. I am sorry for them and ask forgiveness. I ask for a fresh start. I thank you for my abundant blessings, including a bed to sleep in. I pull up the sheets and bedspread in acknowledgement of who You are, and Your interest in every part of my life today.”

Some people say it takes too long to make one’s bed. I timed myself this morning: 67 seconds. And as I made it, I found myself thinking of a good-morning song I learned years ago: “Good-morning, Lord, this is your day. I am your child, show me your way.”