Some nights, sleep is elusive…

I stared at the ceiling into the wee hours of the morning yesterday, listening to the muffled sounds drifting up through the floor boards from the conversation of the couple who lives below me, trying to ignore the endless streams of thoughts and questions whirring around behind my sleepless lids.

Homework, job situation, the outline that still needs to be fleshed out for tomorrow’s evening Bible study…I push the thoughts resolutely aside, and close my eyes, trying to will myself to go to sleep.

Not so much going to happen.

I had been thinking all evening about the concept of discipleship, about what it means to disciple someone, or to BE a disciple—what makes discipleship effective…or not? So many questions in my mind about this Son of Man that we follow…so much to marvel at in considering His characteristic attitudes, emotions, and reactions, when thinking of the wisdom of God, and the situation of man—His broken image-bearer.

Somewhere in there, sleep drifted in for a few hours, because I remember waking at some point before 4 a.m., and being unable to drift off again.

Sometimes God wakes us during the middle of the night because there’s someone—or something—that He wants us to pray for. So I waited. And listened. And the names—and the faces—began to parade through like some kind of odd funeral procession.

They were smiling faces…hundreds of them…people that I know, and care about, and some that I have not thought of for a long time…but their eyes were haunted, deep pools of unspoken emotion, mute witnesses which spoke of the pain of existence, the uncertainty of life, the tremulous beauty of hope, the struggle of growth, the shame of failure, the unquenchable desire for that which is deeper, fuller, more meaningful, most real…

There’s a story behind every face. Many stories, actually. Some of them, I know…and many, I don’t. But it was sweet to know this morning that my Father knows all of them. That He cares more deeply than I am even capable of imagining…that He has a plan for each one of these men and women…that He holds their futures in His hands, that He sees the hurts, knows the pain, and longs to heal and restore each one of them, and that He yearns over them all with a father love too rich to have a mortal counterpart.

It is an incredible thing to be upheld and undergirded by the hands of the Living God.

But right now...I think I'm going to go brew some tea, and head to my 7:40 class. Might be needing an awful lot of tea to make it through today. *laugh*