Last weekend I became a granddad for a second time. I won’t pretend there weren’t anxious moments on the way and yes, sleep was lost as we waited for the news to finally come through. Even so, the wait was most certainly worth it – Eliza Ann is a beautiful baby girl. Born weighing a healthy 8lbs and 11oz, she has already enjoyed a good night sleep in the crib that five generations of my family have slept in before her. As well as my grandmother and mother, the 26 others who have slept in that crib includes my own children, my other grandchild, and, indeed, myself.
In the coming months though my granddaughter will grow bigger and soon she will have to leave the crib to the next member of the family who, even now, is being knitted together in her mother’s womb. [Psalm 139:13]. But still, Eliza will need to sleep. My hope for her is that she will always know what it is to sleep well, but of course there are likely to be times when life for her will make that difficult. And when it does, I pray that she might find Psalm 3 as helpful as her Grandad does. It goes like this.
O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.”
But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill.
I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.
Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.
Salvation belongs to the LORD; your blessing be on your people!
It’s common for those who are anxious, or under stress to find it difficult to get a good night’s sleep, so it’s no surprise that some of us find it sometimes difficult to awake refreshed after a full eight hours. After all, life is sometimes difficult, there are times when we all are unsettled by things that are changing around us, and we are uncertain of what the future might hold. And there are those who tonight will even fear for their lives as missiles threaten to take their life before morning comes. For some the nights have indeed been long.
In Psalm 3, David is under stress. His son Absalom has led an uprising against him and has even plotted to have him killed. David has had to flee and, as he has done so, he has had to listen to the taunts of those who oppose him, taunts which suggest that God is no longer for him. David however knows better. He knows God is his shield, the lifter of his head. Knowing that God will protect him and knowing he will not be put to shame, David therefore cries out to God.
And God answers.
And as a result, despite all his difficulties, David can sleep – knowing that it is God who sustains him as he does so.
Because of the protection he is confident God will give, David will not fear his enemies. He doesn’t doubt that God will deal with them, that he will both shame them and disarm them. As such, David knows salvation belongs to the Lord.
And so it is with us. Daily we face difficulties. We may feel overwhelmed by them and struggle as others look on and question how we can still trust in a God who, from their point of view, seems to have abandoned us. But we know different. Because, as we too cry out to God, he answers us in the promises he has made, the promises we find in the Bible. And so, with the shield of faith, we can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one [Ephesians 6:16].
Because the truth is that, no matter what our circumstances might be, God is for us. And ‘if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, with him, graciously give us all things?’ [Romans 8:31-32]
So then, we can be absolutely confident ‘that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 8:38-39]
Knowing these things will help us, like David, to sleep at night. Like him, we can be sure that God will sustain us too.
But whilst Psalm 3 is a ‘Psalm of David’, written ‘when he fled from Absalom his son’, it is, at the same time, a psalm about another, greater, king.
Like David, King Jesus was rejected by his own people and was taunted by those who saw him as one who was beyond salvation. As Jesus hung on the cross, he was derided by those who passed by ‘wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” [Mark 15:29-30].
Unlike David however, Jesus was not spared death – even so, death could not hold him. Though he laid down and died, God did not let his ‘holy one see corruption’ [Psalm 16:10]. God sustained Jesus too – even in death. And on the third day he rose again.
And the same will be true for us.
Because whilst we will all one day die, as the verses above remind us, it remains the case that not even death can separate us from the love of God. On occasions in the New Testament Jesus describes those who are dead as merely sleeping. And no wonder. For when we do die, we can be confident that it will be no more difficult for Jesus to raise us as it would be for him to wake us from sleep. And so, just as he did with the dead daughter of the ruler in Matthew 9, he will take our hand or, perhaps, just as he did with the four days dead Lazarus of John 11, he will call our name. And when he does, we too will be raised.
God will sustain us, even in death.
And so, just as he did with David’s enemy, God has shamed and disarmed our enemies – the last enemy needing to be destroyed being death itself. [1 Corinthians 15:26]. And because of the cross, ‘death has been swallowed up in victory’ [1 Corinthians 15:54]. We who were dead in our sin, God has made alive. He has forgiven us all our trespasses, cancelling the record of debt that stood against us, setting it aside by nailing it to the cross.
Jesus’s death paid the penalty for our sins and, in so doing, God disarmed the rulers and authorities, triumphing over them and putting them to open shame, [Colossians 2:13-15]. With sin dealt with, death then has lost its sting. It has been disarmed and rendered utterly powerless. Now and forever.
This is good news indeed.
For reasons I won’t go into, we did not hear of the birth of our new grandchild for several hours after she was actually born. Though she was delivered just before midnight on Saturday evening, we did not know of her arrival until a little after six on the Sunday morning. And I was reminded once again that good news is only truly good once it is told, that what is true can only be rejoiced over, once it’s been made known.
Which is why I sometimes write as I do. Because the good news of Jesus’ victory over sin and death needs to be spoken about if others are to know the joy that comes from receiving it.
For those who do, they is every reason to sleep soundly at night – irrespective of their circumstances. Because the God who keeps them safe is one who neither slumbers nor sleeps [Psalm 121:2-3]. And when at last their time comes to die, they will be able to ‘rest in peace’ as those who ‘rely, not on [themselves], but on the God who raises the dead’. [2 Corinthians 1:9].
Because salvation really does belong to the LORD, and his blessing really is on his people.
And so I hope that it’s not just little Eliza that will sleep like a baby tonight. Rather it is my earnest hope that all who read this might know what it is to sleep well too.
Sweet dreams!
To read ‘We went to the animal fair – the diary of a novice grandparent’, click here
To read ‘Two Little Words’, click here
To read ‘The Repair Shop at the End of the Year’, click here
To read “Hope comes from believing the promises of God”, click here
To read ‘T.S. Eliot, Jesus and the Paradox of the Christian Life’, click here
To read “Why do bad things happen to good people – a tentative suggestion”, click here
To read “Luther and the global pandemic – on becoming a theologian of the cross”, click here
To read “Suffering- A Personal View”, click here.
To read ‘on the FALLEN and the FELLED’, click here
To read ‘On NOT leaving your comfort zone’, click here
To read ‘Looking back to move confidently forward’, click here
To read ‘The Resurrection – is it just rhubarb?’, click here
To read ‘Faith and Doubt’, click here
Some musings 
many congratulations and every blessing to Eliza Ann also to her Mummy and Daddy! R
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Thank you!
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