Beside Somebody Sleeping

You have been awake in that chair for four hours and the person in the bed has not moved.

That is the shape of most nights now. The chair, the small lamp turned to the wall, a book in your lap, and the very particular quality of quiet that comes off a sleeping person you are responsible for.

You read a bit. You listen. You read a bit more. And somewhere in the last few weeks the reading and the listening have merged into one activity, and you could not now say which one you are doing at any given moment.

And you are tired in a way that sleep has stopped fixing, because you are not only awake. You are on watch.

Before anything else, one thing, because a person can arrive at a page about reading from anywhere. If the nights have got heavier than tiredness, if you have been thinking about not being here at all, put this down and call or text 988 in the United States, or your own local crisis line wherever you are, today. This page cannot see you and is not qualified to. That call is.

Two things are also not coming here.

Nobody is handing you a list, and nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows.

What I want to look at is the watch, because you have been keeping it as though nobody else were.

He shall neither slumber nor sleep

There is a line in Psalm 121 about somebody who does not sleep, and it is said twice in two verses on purpose.

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:4, King James Version)

Read the doubling. Neither slumber nor sleep.

Slumber is the dozing off. Sleep is the going properly under. The psalm closes both doors, deliberately, in one sentence, which means somebody wanted to leave no possibility that the keeper is ever less than fully awake.

And the verse before it says the same thing about the individual: he will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Said once about the person, then again about the whole nation, in case anybody thought it was general rather than personal.

You are not the only one awake in that room, and four hours in a chair have never once been a watch you were keeping alone. Psalm 121:4 closes both slumber and sleep and says it twice, once about the person and once about the nation, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a chair at midnight.

There is one more thing worth having in it, and it is what the psalm does not say.

It does not say you may now sleep. Nothing in it excuses the chair or promises that the nights end tonight. What it says is that the keeping is not resting on you, and that is a different and better thing than being relieved of the chair.

You have a keeping that does not depend on your being awake, and a night in that chair has never once been the thing holding the person in the bed. It is written he that keepeth thee will not slumber, the promise is doubled and made personal before it is made national, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The reading and the watching have merged

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth separating because the merge is costing you the reading.

Reading and listening use the same attention.

That is why the two cannot be told apart in that chair. They run on one channel, and the listening has priority, correctly, because that is what the chair is for. So the reading gets the leftovers of a channel that is already mostly spoken for.

Which means what happens in that chair is not really reading. It is listening with a book in it, and a book in a listening hour cannot do what a book does, and after a few weeks that starts to feel like reading itself having failed.

You are listening with a book in your lap and not reading, and a merged hour has never once meant the reading stopped working for you. Psalm 121:4 puts the keeping on somebody who never dozes, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman who cannot say which of two things she is doing.

And there is a second layer, and it is the one that has to be said gently.

Something in you has decided the watching is load bearing. That if you stopped listening for a minute, something would happen, and it would be on you.

That is not true and it is also completely understandable, and it is the reason the reading has been colonized. The listening expanded to fill everything because it believes it is the only listening in the room.

You have a room with somebody else keeping watch in it, and one minute of not listening has never once left that bed unattended. The written word doubles the promise so that no possibility of a lapse is left, and His Spirit is the one who takes a watch off a person who was never carrying it alone.

Fifteen minutes at a useful time

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately not in that chair.

Read for fifteen minutes today at a time you would normally be doing something useful.

Out of that room. In the daylight, when somebody else is in the house or the person is settled and somebody else can hear the room, in a slot that had a job in it.

You are not the only one awake in that room, and eleven weeks of nights have never once been a watch kept alone. The Holy Spirit is the one in that chair beside the bed with you, and Psalm 121:4 closes both slumber and sleep and says it twice so that no lapse is left possible.

Fifteen minutes. Then stop.

Here is why out of the room.

Reading in that chair is impossible, and it is impossible for a correct reason rather than a fault. The channel is occupied. Fifteen minutes somewhere the listening is not required is the only place actual reading can happen right now, and one instance of that is enough to prove the reading is intact.

And if there is genuinely nobody to hear the room, then this is the fifteen minutes to ask somebody for. That is a small ask and it is a legitimate one, and people generally say yes.

You are able to read fifteen minutes out of that room, and one quarter of an hour somewhere else has never once been an abandonment. Psalm 121:4 says he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman reading in a different room in the middle of the afternoon.

Take the book back to the chair tonight anyway. It is good company there even when it is only company, and nobody is asking you to give that up.

You have a keeper who never dozes, and a watch shared has never once been a watch given up on. It is written he will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber, the promise arrives personal first and then national, and the Spirit of God is saying it in a sleeping room tonight.