Sleeping on the Job
Trust Jesus to make you right and ready for his return and also to equip you for living productively today.
The National Sleep Foundation says that for too long now we have organized our sleep patterns around the work day, getting up earlier than we would like, for example, to get to work, or working during the afternoon when we are tired and unproductive. It’s time to arrange the work day around our sleep needs, they say. The issue is not how to fit naps into the work day, but how to fit work around sleep. Sleep experts say that three times as many people have better ideas in bed than they have at their desk, which of course suggests that napping at work is a good thing.
Similarly, it is natural for people to place our reassurance for being right and ready for Jesus in our own productivity. The Bible says it’s time to arrange our productivity around the fact that we are already right and ready for Jesus because he has lived and died for us, because the Father has made us his own in baptism, and because the Spirit keeps our faith alive through the hearing of God’s Word and receiving of the Lord’s Supper.
For weary Christians who can’t produce enough accomplishments of our own to be blamelessly ready for his return, Jesus says, “Relax. Take a break. Rest in me. Then you’ll be ready.” The Bible gives us that joyful reassurance, “He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful” (1 Corinthians 1:8-9).
Get away from the pressures of your own productivity making you ready for Jesus, close the door of faith on them, and relax in the productivity of Jesus Christ whose job it was and is to make you ready for heaven. More than that, Jesus makes you ready for this life right now! “For in him you have been enriched in every way … Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed” (1 Corinthians 1:5-7).
Trust Jesus to make you right and ready for his return and also to equip you for living productively today.
PRAYER: Let me relax from my busyness of getting myself ready for you, Jesus, and let me fall asleep in the peace of your love and forgiveness. Let my rest rejuvenate me to be active and productive in my Christian living. Remember all those who burden themselves with guilt and uncertainty, fretting over their weakness and imperfection, that they too might rest in you. Amen.