Day 6: The Bravest Sentence in the Psalter
Read: Psalm 3:3–6
I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.
— Psalm 3:5 (ESV)
Reflect
Remember where David is. He is fleeing Absalom. An army is out there. Verse 6 speaks of "many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around."
And in the middle of that, this sentence: "I lay down and slept."
It may be the bravest sentence in the whole book of Psalms.
The verb for "I lay down" is shakhavti, and it speaks of a finished act. David reports three things that already happened. I lay down. I slept. I woke up. Each one is done. Then he gives the reason underneath all three: "for the LORD sustained me." The Lord was holding him up the whole time, even while he was unconscious.
Think about what sleep requires. You stop watching. You stop planning. You stop guarding. You hand the night over to someone else. For a man with enemies in the hills, that is not a small thing.
So David's sleep here is not exhaustion. It is a confession. Every time he closed his eyes, he was saying, "I am not the one keeping me alive."
Many of us lie awake because we have quietly decided we are the ones holding everything together. Psalm 3 offers another way to end the day.
Across Scripture
David says it again: "In peace I will both lie down and sleep" (Psalm 4:8), and another psalm says the Lord "gives to his beloved sleep" (Psalm 127:2). God promised his covenant people a land where "you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid" (Leviticus 26:6). In the Gospels, Jesus sleeps in the stern of the boat during the storm, then asks his disciples why they are so afraid (Mark 4:38–40).
Sit With It
Tonight's prayer can be one sentence: "I lie down, for you sustain me." Pray it before you look at what tomorrow requires.
Pray
Sustain me while I sleep.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.