A Biblical View of Sleep
Adrian Reynolds
“It is quite possible that our world today understands this link better than it knows. Our culture’s low view of sleep – as something which just interrupts the real business of the day – may be reflective of a low view of death: you’ve got to pack as much in before you’re finished. We draw up “bucket lists” – fifty things to do before you’re fifty, for example. Our culture does not want to recognise that God gives us limitations and boundaries to life – both temporal (waking and sleeping) and eternal (life and death).”
Reynolds begins this brief paperback lamenting that he’d never come across a Christian book on sleep. Having been fascinated by sleep for some time, and helped by the £1 price-tag on And So To Sleep… (shout-out to 10ofthose), I was also drawn in. Despite its brevity, the book is fairly comprehensive. Reynolds begins by exploring sleep as a good gift from God, links it as an earthly picture to its heavenly reality, and finishes (pleasingly, but surprisingly) with some practical tips in getting better slumber.
Along this short path he makes a few genuinely profound points. Reynolds lays bare, for example, the thoroughly Biblical connection between sleep and death. He applies it helpfully, and since I’ve tried (with some success) to think about falling asleep to this world forever before bed, and to think about awaking in the New Creation first thing in the morning. Any connections from our day-to-day rhythms to life in eternity are warmly welcome, and, on a side-note, if you’ve ever mulled over whether we’ll sleep in the New Creation or not, this book’s for you. There’s also a laudably and sensitively brave discussion pointing out that our lack of sleep might have spiritual answers.
In terms of improvement, I think I would’ve liked one or two more examples of how to ground the earthly picture/heavenly reality insights into my day-to-day life. However, because Reynolds spells out his aim with tight precision, and accomplishes it, there’s not much critique that sticks. Other than being slightly clumsily written and oddly unengaging (but is this simply due to the harsh typeface of my copy?), it’s good.
Because it’s so short and so cheap, and does a satisfactory job of a topic that we all care about, I fully recommend it. But I wouldn’t expect it to change your life.
5/10