What Keeps You Awake at Night? – Part 2 — Morning Devotions

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Good morning and welcome to Morning Devotions. This is Chris Wits. I wonder if it’s going to be a special day for you. Certainly, hope so. The advertising agency Ogilvie did a study called What’s keeping Australians Up at night, and they came up with some very interesting facts. Now, maybe you’re one of those lucky people who sleep soundly, and don’t suffer from insomnia. There are many thousands of others who find it difficult to sleep, you know, their mind races at 100 miles an hour, the more they try to sleep, the more difficult it becomes, and that could be your experience.

But this study revealed that our most common concerns are, interestingly, a lack of personal respect for other people, that’s one, and a concern about damage to public property, and I’m talking about littering and vandalism. Now, when I discovered this, I was quite fascinated by the results. I was surprised actually. Almost half of all Australians who were surveyed are highly concerned, for example, about preservatives and artificial ingredients in food. They’re worried about obesity and not exercising enough, and there are many others.

I want to try and look at um trying to answer this question, what keeps you awake at night from a different angle? Have you ever had one of those nights, there might have been a rush, 1000 things going through your head, or you’ve got a burden weighing on your heart and all you do is toss and turn.

I think it indicates that we live in a very restless culture, we are busy, we’re overcommitted, overworked, overstressed, and we have more stuff and material and wealth than probably any other society in history, and with that comes this incomparable level of tension, stress, and worry, and maybe you’re thinking about something now, a problem at work, or an unresolved conflict in your own life, or an addiction problem, serious illness, maybe it’s a friend or family member that’s in crisis, and maybe it’s a stack of bills that just keeps on piling higher and higher, and you feel like you’re sinking deeper, and so your hearts slip as you try to sleep into this tossing and turning.

Making the days quite long, we work hard, don’t we, to find rest and peace, it’s, it’s a funny paradox this, but the truth of the matter is this, and I want to talk again about this tomorrow, only God has an answer to the restlessness that we feel.

And now Jesus puts it very well. He says in the scriptures, Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I’m gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls because my yoke is easy and my burden is light. That’s what Jesus said. So we could ask ourselves today, where is my life going? What’s going to happen to me tomorrow, this week, this month, or, or even this year.

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Will my future turn out the way I hope? You might have seen the very interesting film Back to the Future. Michael J. Fox plays a character called Marty McFly, and here’s Marty, a teenager living in the year 1985, and he travels back in time 30 years in this time machine. And as he tries to get back to the future, he, he bumps into his parents before they actually met, and he messes up the way that his parents would meet and then fall in love and have children, which of course puts his own future existence in jeopardy.

But the way the film portrays Marty’s uncertain future is, is a photograph of his siblings, and you remember what happens in the photographs, the pictures slowly disappear throughout the film, and you see Marty rushing around in panic trying to rescue or secure this picture of the future, except he’s trapped in the past.

And that’s a lot like how many of us, when I think about it, live our lives today. Each of us has some particular kind of picture in our mind of the future. What is the future that we hope for? What keeps you awake at night? I think all of us want our world to be a better place. We, we have a hope for ourselves, our, our children, our home, we have a hope for financial success, for love and relationships, and we want things like a fulfilling career and, we want to be able to say at the end of our lives, well, I think, think I’ve done something significant in my life. So all these things fill out the picture of our future.

But there is underlying that a nagging tension and fear that some things are disappearing, that we might never get them back again. And, and if we have them, what if we lose them? So is this what keeps us awake at night?

I just want to say that God knows and His very presence can help you rest at night. Trust in Almighty God. His power is there, Lord. These things are true. Help us, Lord, to trust our tomorrows to You. Amen.

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