Sleep is far overrated. It is a bully. It gobbles up 1/3 of every day. 30% of our lives. If we live to be ninety, we will have spent 30 years sleeping. What a waste. Or so I thought. Somewhere in the world there was a party going on and I was missing it, napping on my pillow.

In college I determined to wean myself from this monster. Every week I allowed myself 15 less minutes of sleep. I was down to less than six hours a night and headed for four. I had read somewhere that people like Benjamin Franklin only required four hours. While everyone else was wasting there life away unplugged, I would be vibrantly living!

Now the research is in. As creatures we actually require sleep. It is where we renew, recharge and restore our mind and body. In fact eight to nine hours is recommended for us to live longer and healthier lives.

If the science is right, the person who doesn’t sleep will live a shorter life, and a less vibrant life. (The person with sleep disorder please disregard this article. Your anger and frustration is justified. The person with deadlines, finals, or is at war in Afghanistan please disregard for now). I am writing for those of us in the center of the bell curve.

Psalm 127:2 was my nemesis in college: In vain you rise early and stay up late. Tioling for food to eat. For He grants sleep to those he loves.

God grants sleep! Not only is he working on my behalf while I sleep. And it is vain or empty for me to push the limits of my mortality and live as though I don’t need sleep. I am a creature not the Creator.

To sleep or not to sleep is, therefore, not only a biological issue, but a spiritual issue. It is an inescapable metaphor pointing to our dependency on God. It demands our faith in the one who watches over us, who will neither slumber nor sleep (Psa. 121:4).

Essentially, sleep brings three issues to the surface: our mortality (we are limited), our dependency on God and faith. Faith, because we must trust in the one who is caring for us when we cannot care for ourselves. One third of our lives is a sermon on our mortality, dependency and trust.

Trust is a difficult thing for those of us who have been raised in a self-sufficient, pragmatic culture such as Davy Crocket’s and Daniel Boone’s America. We love songs that state, “I did it my way.” Trust feels irresponsible. We must do it ourselves.

But at the end of the day we will all die. As my sons sing “We will all be GONE!” We will have to trust our legacy to our children, we will have to trust our future into the hands of a loving God. Why not learn the lesson while we are awake; while we are living?

So sleep. Sleep is an act of faith. Faith in grace. It is the action of a child trusting in a wise, strong and benevolent Parent. Don’t feel guilty. You are called to it, you need it, and Someone else is caring for you while you helplessly sleep. Good night.

Most religions speak of oneness, unity and love. Though the construct isn’t exactly the same in each faith, together they point to the longing of every human being to be united with God in love and to express that love to others. But how is it achieved? What creates true unity?

Jesus was once addressing a crowd when he was told that his mother and brothers were outside wanting to speak to him. Before speaking with his natural mother and brothers he used the moment as a teaching opportunity.

Matt. 12:48-50  He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”  Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.  For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

How does one become so close to Jesus that he calls us family: brother, sister, mother? The answer is tied to obedience: whoever does the Father’s will. Obedient action for God toward others is tied to intimacy with God.

In a similar passage Jesus ties obedience with intimacy: John 14:21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”

If we should wonder what we are to obey, Jesus answers that question in John 15:9-14: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. . . . My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command.

It seems obvious. Love is not merely a feeling, it is not the absorption of all things into oneness. It is two distinct persons sacrificially giving themselves to each other. Sacrificial love creates the existential feeling of unity, oneness and family.  It is not the reverse.

Closeness is a feeling that follows the tangible action of love. By faith I believe in obeying Jesus and I will love that person as he has commanded me to. The outcome is feeling close to Jesus and often the person we have sacrificially loved.

Jesus is our example. He showed us the greatest love by laying down his life for us. He now calls us friends, family, loved ones if we follow his lead and lay down our lives for him and others. To feel loved, we have to love.

Someone will protest that this is not grace. They will argue that what I am saying is an earning of God’s love. But that is not true. Grace is undeserved. Jesus’ sacrificial love for us was unmerited. Our love for others is to be the same. That is grace. Grace is the motivation for our love for others. Grace does not create passivity but responsibility. We are response-able to God’s love to love others.

Love is not a pietistic platitude, centered solely around immaterial souls and heaven. It is substantive and earthy. Intimacy with the divine, without love for others, is heavenly poppy cock. It is spiritual cotton candy. A mirage. A spiritual state of mind only.

And to have the rock solid subjective assurance that we are one with God, there must be the objective evidence that we are in his family: that his DNA is in us; that we have our Father’s eyes. That truth is seen tangibly in our loving actions for others.

No other disciple was closer to Jesus than John, the Beloved. They were truly friends and he caught this truth. He said:

1 John 4:7, 11-12, 20  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. . . Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. . .  If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

So let’s join the God-family. We believe that Jesus sacrificially loved us and died for our sins. Now let’s authenticate our family line by loving others and experience the oneness that he promised.

Sometimes it takes the 24-hour flu to remind me that I am just human. As my strength returned this morning I took a walk to the beach. As my feet reached the sand and I breathed in the fresh, salt air, I sighed, “Today, I’m just human.” It felt like a thousand pounds of unrealistic expectations dropped from my shoulders onto the sand below. All the “should haves,” the “oughts,” the “whens” and “if onlys” driving my soul fell to the ground. As the next wave washed away my footprints, my superhuman burdens were also swept away.

I, like many, try to live a superhuman life. Superman. Many, from Nietzsche to the writers of the comic-book hero, have pictured humans evolving or becoming superhuman in various ways. We imagine that it is in our power to become super or beyond human.

To facilitate this we create time efficient toys to make us feel we are achieving super human abilities. God is omnipresent. So are we, or so we think by our smart phones. God is all-knowing so are we with our access to infinite online knowledge. God is all-powerful and so are we, at least in our own minds. (Our spouses and friends know better). Still, in ways we appear to be beyond human.

But there is a price to pay. The more we conquer and accomplish the more is expected of us. It used to be that 40 hours a week was a normal work week. But when we were out of the office we were not working. We were playing, eating, driving or resting. Now we ring every drop out of those multi-tasked-forty hours. Then on top of that, we take our work into the car, at the lunch break and to our home. We cram 60 hours of work into forty and then take an extra 20 outside the office. Have we become immortal or are we less human?

The weight we carry and the speed at which we travel reminds us of our true mortality. We may be able to travel in space but we still need space suits. We may be able to work and accomplish great things but we stress ourselves to the point of exhaustion and psychologists still insist we need proper sleep to recharge. We still need to eat and exercise. And we still need play time to re-create our souls. As amazing as we think we are we are still merely but barely human.

The bible, even from the earliest pages, reminds us of that. Genesis chapter two describes us as being created from the dust of the earth, just like the rest of the animals. We are creation not creator. It is a great but humbling reminder to contemplate the truth I don’t always want to hear— I am dirt.

Yet, Scripture is equally stunned by the action of God in making us in his image. The passage says he breathed into us his breath making us a living soul. So we are unique and distinct from the rest of nature but that distinction is not our achievement. It is God’s. I am the image of God to those around me.

Yes, I am special not because of my accomplishments and abilities but because of God’s character stamped onto my being. Reflecting God to this world, giving his love to those around me is the highest the most superb thing I will ever do.

The writer of Psalm 8 seems to reflect this tension between dirt and the divine when he says:
what are mortals that you should think of us, mere humans that you should care for us?
For you made us only a little lower than God, and you crowned us with glory and honor.
Yes, it is wonderful and humbling to be human.

So as I continue in my walk I embrace the dirt-ness of my humanity. My footsteps are washed away as quickly as I leave them in the sand. I can’t do everything. I can’t be everything. I can’t be everywhere or respond to everything. Life is coming at me too fast to respond. I am racing down the freeway so fast that I couldn’t slow down to catch the next exit even if I wanted to. I almost thought I was God. But only he is everywhere at once, all-powerful and all-knowing. There is a God, and it is not me. As for me? Today I’m just human.

Just got back from having breakfast overlooking La Jolla Cove. Stunning, beautiful, amazing. Always good to be there with my wonderful wife. As we ate on a cold balcony, we could see the cove swimmers below taking their last plunge for the year in icy 54 degrees water. Most of us were on the shore but these hearty souls were entering the painting. No longer spectators, but participants of life. (As long as it doesn’t kill ‘em).

Our breakfast discussion turned to New Year resolutions. What changes do we want to make for the New Year? The radio program during our drive reminded us pessimistically that most resolutions will never make it through the year. Maybe that’s because our resolutions are just a good intentions without any nuts and bolts to make it reality.

Maybe the concept of changing our lives this year is too vague. What if we go bigger and smaller with the increment of time. That is, most changes we want for this year, we want for smaller increments of time: for next month, for next week and for tomorrow. But the reverse direction is also true. Most changes we want for our year we also want for the next ten years. Yes, for the rest of our lives.

Perhaps this is a more practical tool to view the new year. If I were going to paint my life I would begin with some broad, macro layout in pencil to make sure everything fits and is in perspective. The micro comes in when I both sketch the details and then actually paint the details using fine brush strokes. Life is the same way. We with God’s help can re-create our lives like a painting.

We need to think macro and micro about our lives. That is, if I don’t want a resolution for my entire life (macro) or for tomorrow (micro) perhaps it’s not a good or practical change. But if I want the resolution for the rest of my life, then the question becomes, how will I incorporate it into my tomorrow? The micro supports the macro and visa versa, but too much is lost in a broad resolution for “next year.” Let me give you an example from my own life.

I want to be better organized in 2010. But unless this is tied to the macro (life) and the micro (day) it probably won’t happen. In fifty years it hasn’t happened. So the big picture is I want to be better organized so that I live my life with quality–in the painting. That means I want to live abundantly without clutter, worrying about what I’ve forgotten or misplaced, spending quality time with people, without missing the important moments of life. I bet I waste ten minutes a day minimum just looking for stuff hidden in my piles. A simple organized life (without being a neat-freak) is connected with abundant life, in that it organizes the details in way that I am choosing what I want rather than just reacting to disorganization and clutter. But it takes time to live. It takes attention to organization, maintenance and cleaning (micro), in order to be free to enjoy the macro.

Micro means I have to figure out how this is going to happen on a day to day basis in my schedule, otherwise it’s just a nice intention. This puts teeth to my intentions. So I plan to organize my home study on Monday morning at 9am and my office on Tues. at 10 am. I will pick up around the house every evening before I go to bed. I will review my calender every morning and evening. I will return phone calls by 4 p.m. every day. I will schedule review and reorganizing times as part of a scheduled quarterly day spiritual retreat. All these things must be scheduled or they wont happen. I think you get the idea the macro informs the micro and micro informs the macro so that a change or resolution becomes a reality instead of a good intention. Too often I’ve been like an artist who just start painting and runs out of canvas in the end. The picture doesn’t fit in the limitations of the canvas.

This is not to control me but to set me free. Actually self-control is a good thing and a fruit of the Spirit. I guess I never thought of a resolution that way–self-control.

Too often we treat the fruit of the Spirit or godly virtues as qualities that just happen to us passively without any participation on our parts. But maybe that’s the crime of today: passively waiting to be changed when God has already given us the power and grace to change. Maybe that’s the pop heresy of our day: automatism: that quality life and genuine love for others will just happen us. Maybe God’s grace gives us the ability to act and respond.

Isn’t that what responsibility means? “Able to respond, response-able.” Peter the Apostle stated boldly that “God has given us by His power everything that pertains to truly living and becoming godly” (2 Pet 1:3). Then he says, because of this truth we are to “make every effort” or respond to God’s grace and power.

So here we go into the New Year, with new hope and changes for our lives, that by God’s grace are truly possible. We must dare and plan to become new and different by God’s grace. The old has gone, the new has come. Let’s respond to His love and live inside the painting.