Newborn Experimenting

Sleep has become a finely measured thing in the Brown household over these last several weeks. While newborns spend the majority of their tiny existence asleep, they frequently disagree with the adults in the room as to whether night time is meant for sleeping or for the exercising of one's lungs. Though the amount of sleep needed may differ between individuals and across lifespans, what is indisputable is our universal need for sleep. Scientists don't really know what sleep does for our bodies—or rather, they know that it does lots of things, but none seem to explain why we need to sleep somewhere between 25 and 35 percent of our lives away. Animals, however, that are prevented from sleeping long enough will die eventually and without any apparent cause. My youngest son may be trying to repeat these experiments.

More than just our bodies need rest. Yesterday I spoke with someone who, reflecting on the COVID-19 Pandemic, noted not only how awful the pandemic was, but also how they experienced a small taste of heaven through lockdown. Their young adult children were forced to return home from college. Since they weren't allowed to go anywhere, they couldn't run themselves in a million different directions and instead played games and went to the pool and ate meals together as a family again. For all the terrible ways people experienced quarantines and lockdown, for this family they were able to enjoy, just a bit, the rest and togetherness they craved.

This taste of freedom, rest, and community is often how scripture refers to Sabbath. When God rests on the seventh day of creation, it is not because God is tired, but rather that God is communing with the creation that now exists. In Exodus, the Sabbath is instituted as a rejection of slavery—both so the Israelites would be free from labor and so that they could not enslave other people or aspects of creation. Sabbath, like sleep, serves no definitive purpose. IN many ways it is an inefficient use of time, and yet it is utterly essential to our health and vitality. I pray that one day my son will no longer rebel against the proper functioning of his circadian rhythm, but I pray, too, that we can find rest for our souls in an age that prioritizes busyness.