Sleep and Comfort

Effective leaders offer discouraged people strength, not comfort. Most people want comfort, not strength. Believers in China or Cuba or Iraq or Sudan today need strength more than comfort. They need both, but if they have to choose, they clearly need strength. We are no less at war, but our war is less visible and our culture offers the pretense of being able to hide from the war.

It is much more pleasant to be given the grace of an extra hour of sleep than the grace of rising ahead of the alarm so that my day is prayed over and my day’s instructions are clearly and faith-fully received.

This time next year you will be much more excited by the danger you refused to worry about today or the fact that you got up earlier and accomplished something valuable or important than by the extra sleep you got or by the movie you stayed up late to watch.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.

Besides this, knowing the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up from sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is nearly over, and the daylight is near, so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk with decency, as in the daylight: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no plans to satisfy the fleshly desires.
(Romans 13:10-14 HCSB ©®)