Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you. Deuteronomy 11:18
Last night I had trouble sleeping, which is a rarity for a woman who has been nicknamed “the log” by her husband.
For as long as I’ve known Perry, he has lived by two surefire rules for remedying occasional insomnia: First, stay in bed. “Even if you aren’t sleeping, your body can rest.” Second, while you lie there not-sleeping, recite Bible verses until your body gives way.
For the past week, I’ve been reading a handful of psalms. And when I say “reading,” I mean over and over again, until I’d allowed those divine words to read me.
So as I lay there not-sleeping, I decided to give Perry’s methods a shot. I folded my hands across my chest, let my heavy eyelids fall shut, exhaled my frustrations over my wakefulness, and began to whisper the poetic fragments God had graciously been writing on my heart:
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers…he is like a tree planted by streams of water.
Even in darkness, light dawns for the upright, for the gracious, compassionate, righteous man.
Within minutes of murmuring those passages, I had drifted off to sleep. Truth is the most comfortable of pillows for the body, the mind, the soul.
Father, thank You for the unparalleled restfulness I find in Your timelessly tranquil Word.
