Make Your Bed

I haven’t slept well this week.  Maybe it’s the start of the new semester.  Maybe it’s the outside noises.  Maybe it’s my fault.  I have to admit that I’m not very diligent about making my bed every day.  I can usually manage to clean things up, but the bed doesn’t get made.  When I think about it, how long would it really take?  A couple of minutes?  Still, as soon as I get up in the morning, I’m working toward getting out of the house and to work as quickly as possible.  As a general rule, I take care of the housework when I get home from work.  This week, however, there were some others things that stole my attention.  As a result, my house, especially my bedroom was in a state of mild chaos.  This affected my productivity at home and how well I was sleeping.  By the end of the week, I was exhausted.  Saturday, I spent a considerable part of the day cleaning the house and doing laundry.  I went to bed that night tired, but calm.  When I woke up in the morning, I noticed that I had not only slept really well, but felt rested.  The covers had hardly moved.

Distractions and chaos threaten to steal things in other parts of our lives also.  Just as the small act of not making my bed, meant less restful sleep, small acts of disobedience means less rest in God.  This doesn’t necessarily mean sin.  It could be not listening to what God is prompting us to do.  It could be rushing to do the things that God wants us to do and forgetting to take of the little things in our own hearts that need attention.  We need to examine our lives for those things that might be robbing us of our rest in God and then take time to concentrate on making our relationship with Him a priority.  And trust me, this isn’t something that should be left for the end of the week.  Daily attention to the little things that result in rest keeps them from being the big things that rob us of who we can be in God.