overcoming sleeplessness

Recently I was having one of those sleepless nights that everyone can identify with, when I was obsessing about some challenges I was facing in the week ahead. Thankfully it is an infrequent occurrence. But no matter how hard I tried or fervently I prayed I could not lay my nagging concerns to rest so I could finally get some rest. I was so frustrated that I was even resenting the moonlight shining through my bedroom window, viewing it as a source of irritation and contributing factor to my insomnia.

But then as a passing cloud shaded the full moon’s light I caught a glimpse of the starry sky. I really cannot explain it, but at that moment, resonating out of the vastness of the universe and the knowledge that the one who created it also created and cared for me, were the words “take no thought for tomorrow.” It was not something dramatic like an audible voice or startling revelation or some angelic appearance or intervention. It was more like the sense and satisfaction a person has when they solve a math problem or discover an important fact they have been looking for. It just settles things and arms a person with the truth that allows them to move on.

When that phrase ‘take no thought for tomorrow” came to me it was like, “Oh yeah, I can do that. If the creator of the universe is telling me to take no thought, then why waste time taking thought.” And right then and there I decided to stop thinking and worrying about the morrow, laid all my anxious thoughts aside and within minutes was asleep.