The Divine Anaesthetic

It's been over a week since my last post and I know many of you have been wondering what's happened. I sure appreciate your prayers, and so I want to give you a brief update on life for me over the last few days.

This last couple of weeks have been a rather difficult one for me, in part because there have been a number of days where I have felt seriously ill (primarily side effects of chemotherapy), but mainly in terms of handling chronic fatigue. There are some days when almost all I do is sleep the entire day. I'll wake up for a few minutes to eat, and then go straight back to sleep. On other days, it isn't so drastic, but fatigue is still a major factor to contend with. For this reason, although I've sat down several times to write on the blog, I've not been able to complete anything substantial -- sometimes I'll write just a paragraph and then feel ready for another sleep! In fact, at the moment I have a very narrow window each day where I have energy to write. Hopefully, this is just a temporary situation.

Having said that, my faith remains high. My family and I continue to look to the Lord as both Healer and the One who provides "sufficient grace" for the situation (2 Corinthians 12:9). These are just part of the challenges we must face in this trial of faith. And sleep is actually an answer to prayer for me. A couple of weeks ago, my sleep was erratic and often disrupted, particular at night. There was a time when I was crying out to the Lord for help to sleep. Now I'm sleeping all the way through the night (and often beyond too!).

Psalm 127:2 declares that the Lord "grants sleep to those he loves." And Psalm 4:8 says:

"I will lie down and sleep in peace for you, O Lord, make me dwell in safety."

There is also a real sense that sleep is the Lord's anaesthetic. God put Adam to sleep when he operated on him (see Genesis 2:21), and he did the same for Abraham, when he confirmed his covenant with him (see Genesis 15:12). When I helped in the rehabilitation of drug addicts, back in the 1980s, we often witnessed the Lord putting them effectively to sleep for up to three days -- the administration of divine anaesthetic as they slept through the effects of withdrawal.

So I'm putting a positive spin on this need for sleep. Each time I go to sleep, I'm asking the Lord to perform his surgery. But I'm also looking forward to the time when I will have more energy and be able to press more into the areas of ministry that I love most - meeting up with those who need pastoral care and communicating the wonder of the Gospel, both through the spoken and the written word.