Praying and Sleeping in Gilead

Reading Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful novel Gilead a few weeks ago, I was struck by how it joins together two things I tended to think of as being at odds with each other: prayer and sleep. 

I first noticed this about halfway through, when the narrator, the aging and ailing Reverend John Ames—the whole novel is an extended letter written to his young son—closes a section by saying, “Much more prayer is called for, clearly, but first I will take a nap” (125). And then, he says something similar just a few pages later: “Now I will pray. First I think I’ll sleep. I’ll try to sleep” (131).

My initial reaction reading these lines was concern. My thought was that prayer should come first, then sleep. When I think of prayer in relation to sleep, my mind automatically goes to the disciples falling asleep while Jesus prays in Gethsemane, and I know from experience that tiredness is a strong temptation to not pray. So, naturally, reading these lines, I thought, “Uh oh.” It seemed to me that sleep was keeping Ames from bringing to God the troubles weighing on him.

True, Robinson’s novel does recognize that sleep can be a way of avoiding hard things. In one scene, Ames’ best friend, Boughton—also an aging, ailing pastor, seems to fall asleep, and Ames explains why: “Boughton sort of nodded off then, as he does when conversations get difficult” (212). 

Tiredness can also make people irritable, working against the kindness they pray to able to show to others. At one point, Ames gets up before sunrise and goes to his church’s sanctuary to pray—until, just like the disciples in Gethsemane, he falls asleep. When he is woken up by Boughton’s prodigal son, Jack—the very person he had been “praying for the wisdom to do well by”—Ames confesses in his writing that “I was immediately aware that my sullen old reptilian self would have handed him over to the Philistines for the sake of a few more minutes’ sleep” (167). Sleep, it’s true, can be a hindrance to love of God and neighbor.

But Robinson’s novel ultimately shows that prayer and sleep can work together. First, sleep can be an answer to prayer. Ames says the reason he fell asleep in the sanctuary that morning is because he had been “praying for tranquility”; as a result, “I had arrived at a considerable equanimity, there in the dark, and I believe that is what permitted me to sleep” (168). This reminded me of Psalm 127:2: “he gives to his beloved sleep.” The ability to sleep is a gift God gives us out of love; so we should pray for it.

(As an aside—this doesn’t seem to be a point implicit in Gilead—prayer and sleep can both be ways of submitting our lives and cares to God. In Psalm 127:2, resisting the gift of sleep is a symptom of “anxious toil,” of not trusting God to provide. But the person who has prayed in the faith that God provides can fall asleep trusting He will answer. To quote another psalm, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” [Psalm 4:8].)   

Second, the novel suggests that prayer and sleep work together to help us see clearly. Ames writes later on that “I have prayed considerably, and I have slept awhile, too, and I feel I am reaching some clarity” (201). Notice that the clarity comes not from depriving himself of sleep so he can pray all night, nor from sleeping in and neglecting prayer; instead, Ames associates the clarity with praying and sleeping. 

Elsewhere, Ames reflects that “right worship is right perception” (135). To worship God rightly, we have to see Him as He is. That’s hard to do when we aren’t praying, as Jesus did in Gethsemane, “Thy will be done.” When we aren’t praying “Hallowed be Thy Name,” we are following after our own skewed vision of reality, in which everything revolves around glorifying ourselves. And it’s also hard to see God as He is when we are exhausted or sleep-deprived. How many times have I thought the sky was falling and God had forgotten me, when all it took to show my fears and unbelief for what they were was a good night’s rest? 

The novel ends with the line, “I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep” (247). Is this a sign that Ames was wrong to put sleep before prayer earlier, and now he’s got the order right? I think not, because taken as a whole the novel treats both sleeping and praying as ways that Ames receives peace from God. This last line is instead a sign that, after weeks of spiritual trial leading to “elusive … grueling” sleep (155), he is at peace with God and neighbor once more.

Emphatic Evangelicalism

One of the books I have most benefitted from reading this year is Fred Sanders’ The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Crossway, 2010). I had picked up the book for the obvious reason of wanting to grow in my understanding of the Trinity, but what struck me about the book from its first pages on is that it is also a defense of the neglected resources available in evangelical theology.

Sanders admits that “evangelicals are not currently famous for their Trinitarian theology” and that “the evangelical movement is bedeviled by a theological and spiritual shallowness” (11). This causes some to develop what I’ll call an “Evangelical Inferiority Complex.” “Many evangelicals,” Sanders writes, “seem haunted by a sense of not being about anything except the moment of conversion. When they stop to ask themselves where they are taking their converts, they fear that when they get there, there will be no there there. … When serious-minded evangelical Christians feel the desire to go deeper into doctrine or spirituality, they typically turn to any resources except for their own properly evangelical resources” (12).

If the primary goal of the book is to show how “the gospel is Trinitarian, and the Trinity is the gospel” (10), the second goal is to show that this thesis is and always has been entirely at home in evangelical thought: in fact, Sanders argues “evangelical Christians have been in reality the most thoroughly Trinitarian Christians in the history of the church” (9). This in turn serves a third goal: “to reintroduce evangelical Protestants to what is best in our own tradition” (13). To borrow the title of another, more recent Crossway book, The Deep Things of God is a work of “theological retrieval for evangelicals.” 

But how did evangelicals get into this situation of being “radically Trinitarian without knowing it” (12)? How did we drift from our historical depths into “theological and spiritual shallowness” (11)? Sanders’ answer to these questions is what has reverberated in my mind ever since I read the book’s Introduction in January, and my reason for writing this post: evangelicalism is “emphatic”—that is, “It has made strategic choices about what should be emphasized when presenting the fullness of the faith” (14). In particular, evangelicals major on “Bible, cross, conversion, heaven”—and, Sanders stresses, “These are the right things to emphasize” (15, italics added). It isn’t wrong that we are so emphatic about these doctrines. The problem, though, is that in our enthusiasm for them we can tend to forget that “Bible, cross, conversion, heaven” only make sense, only have weight and meaning, in the context of a host of other doctrines. “When a message is all emphasis,” Sanders explains, “everything is equally important and you are always shouting” (17). If I wrote this whole post in italics, the italics wouldn’t mean anything. If everything is a nail, what is there left to nail down? After a certain point, emphatic evangelicalism can become “anemic,” “reductionist,” and open to the charge of “anti-intellectualism” (16-17).

But a healthy, robust evangelicalism does have things to say about the doctrines that surround and support our major emphases. “What is needed,” Sanders argues, “is not a change of emphasis but a restoration of the background” (19). And this “restoration of the background” can be had by learning from many of our evangelical forebears.

The Good King by Ghost Ship

One of the good things to come out of Mars Hill Church was that it gave birth to a number of Christian bands that, even after Mars Hill’s collapse, continued to produce music that is both theologically rich and stylistically eclectic. My favorite Mars Hill Bands are Citizens, Kings Kaleidoscope, and The Sing Team, but I also really like Ghost Ship’s debut album, The Good King (2013). One of the things I like about the album is its thematic unity. True to its title, every song is about Christ the Good King and His character and deeds. Even the songs not explicitly on this theme fit within this framework. The songs on the album are also, I am convinced, arranged as a chiasmus.

Tracks with asterisks after them (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) refer to Christ’s kingship, but the central track of the album, the turning point of the chiasmus, is entirely dedicated to enumerating His kingly attributes.

Tracks 1 and 11: “Mediator” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”

Christ the Good King is the intercessor through whom we are reconciled to God and through whom we pray to God.

Tracks 2 and 10: “Orion” and “Where Were You”

Both songs are based on Job 38. Christ the Good King is sovereign over all creation, yet also shows intimate concern for us.

Tracks 3* and 9: “Lion Man” and “Behold the Lamb of God”

Christ the Good King is both conquering lion and sacrificial lamb.

Tracks 4* and 8*: “Jude Doxology” and “The Gospel”

Christ the Good King is our savior, redeeming us from slavery to sin and death.

Tracks 5* and 7*: “Son of David” and “Holy, Holy, Holy”

Christ the Good King removes spiritual blindness so that we can see Him as He is. (In this rendition of “Holy, Holy, Holy,” a Trinitarian hymn, the last line is changed to place emphasis on God the Son as “King of kings.”) 

Track 6*: “The Truth”

“The Truth” at the heart of the album, thematically and numerically, is Christ the Good King. This King is “mighty,” “loving,” “sovereign,” and “faithful.”