I Read Until I Fall Asleep

You got two pages last night and then you were gone, and the lamp was still on when you woke at three.

That is most nights. Two pages, sometimes four, and then the book slides sideways and the light stays on and you wake later and turn it off and go back to sleep.

And you have decided something about that, and the decision is not kind. You have decided you are not really reading. That what you do is use a book as a sedative, and that a person who cannot get through more than two pages has stopped being a reader in any real sense.

Before anything else, one thing, because a person can arrive at a page about reading from anywhere. If what is happening in your life has got heavier than a hard season, 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 two pages, because there is nothing wrong with them, and there is something worth saying about what happens straight afterward.

He giveth his beloved sleep

There is a line in Psalm 127 that says something about sleep that people usually skip past on the way to the busier part of the psalm.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep. (Psalm 127:2, King James Version)

Read the first half and then read who it is aimed at.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late. That is a picture of somebody straining at the edges of the day, and the psalm calls the straining vain, which is a strong word.

And then: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

Sleep is the thing being given. Not productivity, not an extra hour, not the strength to sit up later. Sleep, named as a gift, handed to the ones He loves, in a verse that has just called the sitting up late vain.

You are being handed the sleep as the gift, and going out at page two has never once been the failure half of the evening. Psalm 127:2 names sleep as the thing given to His beloved in the same breath as calling the late sitting up vain, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a lamp that stayed on until three.

There is one more word in it worth having and it is the small one.

So. For so he giveth his beloved sleep. Which ties the giving to what came before it: the straining is vain, and therefore this. The sleep is not an interruption of the good part. In that sentence it is the good part.

You have sleep given rather than sleep conceded, and two pages followed by going out has never once been a reader failing at anything. It is written for so he giveth his beloved sleep, the giving is placed against the straining and named as the better thing, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The two pages are real and the sleep is not the enemy

Here is the mechanism, and it is a matter of what is being counted.

Two pages a night, over a year, is about seven hundred pages. That is two books.

Nobody ever adds that up, because it does not feel like reading while it is happening. It feels like a small failed attempt every single night, and a small failed attempt repeated three hundred times does not present itself as two books. It presents itself as evidence.

But the arithmetic does not care how it felt. Seven hundred pages went in. The two pages are real reading and they are the only reading you are doing, and they are producing a genuine result that nobody has ever counted.

You are reading seven hundred pages and calling it nothing, and two pages a night have never once failed to add up. Psalm 127:2 hands the sleep over as the gift, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman who has been reading three hundred nights and counting none of them.

And there is a second layer, and it is where the unkind verdict came from.

Somewhere reading and sleep got set against each other. As though the book was the intention and the sleep was the interruption, so every night the sleep wins and the book loses and the reader ends up on the losing side.

Psalm 127 has them the other way round. The sleep is the gift and the straining is the vain part, which means the two pages and the going out are not a contest at all. They are a good thing followed by a better one.

You have a good thing followed by a gift, and sleep has never once been the thing that beat your reading. The written word calls the sitting up late vain and hands the sleep to the beloved, and His Spirit is the one who takes a contest out of an evening.

Fifteen minutes at a useful time

So here is the assignment, and it moves the reading rather than extending it.

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

In the daylight, awake, in a slot that had a job in it. Not at the nightstand. Not in bed. The middle of the day, sitting up, with your eyes fully open.

Fifteen minutes. Then stop.

Here is why the daylight and not more pages at night.

You are handed the sleep as the gift, and two pages before going under have never once been the failing half of an evening. The Holy Spirit is the one at that lamp with you, and Psalm 127:2 calls the sitting up late vain and names the sleep as the thing He gives His beloved.

Nothing needs to change about the two pages. They are fine and they are adding up. What has gone wrong is that all of your reading happens at the exact moment your body is switching off, so every single instance of it comes with the taste of failing.

Fifteen minutes awake, once, in daylight, gives you an instance with no sleep in it, and one such instance is enough to break the association.

You are able to read fifteen minutes wide awake, and a page turned in the afternoon has never once made the two at night count for less. Psalm 127:2 says for so he giveth his beloved sleep, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman reading in a chair at three in the afternoon.

And keep the two pages. Nobody is asking you to push for ten at the nightstand, and pushing there would only be sitting up late, which the psalm has already called vain.

You have two pages a night that God is not objecting to, and a lamp left on until three has never once been a verdict on a reader. It is written it is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, the straining is the part called vain and the sleep is the part called given, and the Spirit of God is saying it at a nightstand tonight.