Once in a while, we all face a tough night of sleep.  Maybe it is stormy.  A few nights of startling dream cycles bring us back to consciousness.  For me, my mind interrupts good sleep.  I will wake up fixated on a concern that I have and my subconscious bubbles up and I find myself awake.  We all devise strategies to get back to sleep. 

Through the years, when constrained by burdens that were beating upon my mind and heart, I would be awake thinking.  Of course, praying.  Yes, reviewing some passages that I have sought to memorize.  And after reading an article on the tactics soldiers use to fall asleep in the field, after a cleansing breath, I seek to relax.  After the cleansing breath the soldiers do not draw another breath for a count to five then slowly draw their next breath after having counted to five holding their breath.  Hey, insomniacs will try anything. 

The clutch go to key may actually be the recliner in the basement.  It is like a magic sleeping booth.  Is it the pitch?  It is the change?  Is it its’ softness?  Is it its’ history?  We’ve weathered storms together slugging it out, like on old sea vessel.  For a while, that was my conviction.  It was the magic sleeping chair.  But I have now changed my opinion.  Let me explain.  It’s the dehumidifier…sort of.

For ten years, “old faithful” has run in the furnace room next to the drain.  It was provided by the builder to maintain optimal conditions for the hardware to endure over time.  The Hisense Dehumidifier has run constantly and incessantly with a low hum for over ten years.  It has not stopped.  So when my mind is racing, and my heart is burdened, and I cannot sleep, there is always the background muzak of the dehumidifier’s hum.  But alas, the hum is the key to rest…body and soul.  Let me explain.

When your soul is troubled you retreat to first things, foundational convictions.  The Hisense hum gets me there quicker, and off to sleep.  The same sound and constant drone become not a distraction or an annoyance that sustains the sleeplessness, but a prompt to think about a more important and enduring reality.  When I listen to it for a moment, it prompts the thought that brings rest, first for my soul, and then for my body in sleep.

God is faithful.  God is constant in His faithfulness.  He is faithful all of time, the 24/7 kind of faithfulness.  The kind of faithfulness we need.  “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope; The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’  The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.  It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”  Lamentations 3:21-26

That silly drone of the dehumidifier is now a sustained prompt for me to be reminded of the constant, enduring, ever present, vigilant, sustained, ubiquitous…faithfulness of God.  It is always “on.”  It is always in play.  It has a sweet calming effect upon a troubled disposition.  To have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and to have the sweet assurance of His constant faithfulness are better than any sleep aid.  It calms the spirit and brings sweet peace…and then the alarm goes off and you wake up smiling when greeted by new morning mercies.  This following Jesus brings rest for your soul.  Jesus invited us, ‘Come unto me.’  Let’s come afresh.  He is faithful.