I DON’T GENERALLY have much trouble falling asleep, unless I’m in pain or actively worried about something. My problem is getting back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night. I start thinking about things that aren’t yet finished: lectures I need to give, items I need to remember to add to the to-do list, and yes, blog posts I still need to write. I find myself lying in the dark, organizing ideas and composing sentences in my head. Some say that I should keep a notepad on the nightstand so I can write down my thoughts and then let them go, but I’m afraid that will encourage me to think even more, not less. Thankfully, even when I have a somewhat restless night, I usually make up the lost hours in the next day or so.

And of course, there’s always the possibility of a nice little afternoon nap.

One thing I never do as I lie awake, though, is count sheep. Not that I have any real objection to the practice (other than being allergic to wool). I also don’t know if anyone actually does that anymore and nobody knows for certain how it began. Some believe it started with lonely, insomniac shepherds. If that’s true, then I suppose tired poultry farmers count chickens?

For the faithful, a better bet would be to pray. After all, as Psalm 127:2 suggests, God “grants sleep to those he loves” (NIV). We can ask God for sleep, and pray in a way that embodies the advice of the apostle Peter: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Pet 5:7). We can picture ourselves handing our worries to God or laying them at the foot of his throne, letting them go for the night so we can rest.

Similarly, in a subtle way, Psalm 139 seems to picture the psalmist worshipfully contemplating God and drifting off to sleep in the process:

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you. (Ps 139:17-18, NIV)

In previous verses, the psalmist has marveled at God’s intimate knowledge of him, right down to his innermost thoughts. Here, he turns it around and marvels instead at the vastness of the thoughts of an omniscient God. He’s not proposing to actually try counting them, even if that were possible. Rather, he’s stating in poetic terms that God’s thoughts are infinite and uncountable.

It’s like God’s promise to Abram, when Abram despaired of having a son who would carry on the family line. God took him outside and showed him the night sky. “Look up at the sky and count the stars — if indeed you can count them,” God said. “So shall your offspring be” (Gen 15:5). God isn’t saying, “You will have exactly as many descendants as there are stars in the sky”; he’s saying, “You can’t count the stars, and your descendants will be just as innumerable.” So too are the thoughts of God. We can’t count them, let alone know them; we can only touch the hem of infinity and lose ourselves in wonder.

So why does the psalmist then say, “when I awake, I am still with you”? The phrase seems out of sync with what comes before. But I picture the psalmist lying in bed at night, perhaps staring up at the ceiling or even the sky. He ponders how God has searched his mind and heart and has known him all his life; how God knows his every word before it’s spoken; how God knows everything he does and is with him everywhere he goes.

And at some point, awash in awe, he falls asleep.

. . .

I’M NOT TRYING to promote meditating on the nature of God as a sleep aid. But having said that, I know that much of what keeps us awake at night is the anxiety of feeling small in a big and chaotic world. Psalm 139 helps us remember that God is far bigger — infinitely bigger — and he cares for us intimately nonetheless. Meditating on that fact, letting it fill our imagination, may help us not merely to receive rest from God, but to find our rest in him.

That’s the rest we truly need.