He Neither Slumbers Nor Sleeps

The phone stays on. That is not a choice she is making badly.

She is on a rota. The rota is not optional and it is not unreasonable and it is how the work gets done, and one week in four it is her, and in that week she is reachable from the moment she leaves until the moment she goes back.

And people keep telling her to set boundaries.

They mean well and some of them are close to her. They tell her to switch it off after eight. To have an evening. To protect her rest. One of them said, kindly, that you teach people how to treat you.

She has stopped explaining. It takes too long and it sounds defensive, and the short version, which is that she is not permitted to be unreachable, tends to be heard as a lack of resolve.

So she nods, and puts the phone on the table, and lies down beside it.

And here is what the advice has actually done to her over about two years. It has added a second thing. Now she is tired, and she is also failing at something everybody agrees she should be able to do, and the failing has become its own weight on top of the tiredness.

You may know that table. A phone that has to stay on, and a stack of good advice from people whose work lets them follow it.

Somebody is on the rota with you

Here is a line about God, and I want you to notice how it is phrased.

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.Psalm 121:4

Neither slumber nor sleep.

The psalm before it says: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. And then it says it again, larger, and adds sleep, because slumber is a doze and sleep is the real thing and the psalmist is closing off both.

This is a watchman verse. In that world a city's safety depended on somebody staying awake on a wall, and everybody hearing this knew exactly what a watchman was and knew that a watchman is a human being who eventually sleeps.

And the claim is: this one does not.

You are covered by a watch that does not have a rota, because the one keeping it never comes off. Psalm 121:4 closes off both slumber and sleep in the same line, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a comfort to a woman who cannot switch her phone off.

Now let me say something about the advice, and I want to be careful about the people who gave it to you, because they love you.

Their advice is correct for their situation. Somebody who can switch a phone off should probably switch it off. That is good counsel and it has helped a lot of people, and it is being handed to you as if the difference between you and them were a matter of resolve.

It is not. It is a matter of a rota.

And I am not going to give you a version of it. I am not going to tell you to set a boundary you are not permitted to have, or to structure your evening, or to change anything about your hours, because I cannot see your rota and you are already carrying enough advice from people who could not either.

You are not failing at rest, and your tiredness is not a lack of discipline. The written word puts the unsleeping keeping in God rather than in your ability to be unreachable, and the Holy Spirit is not among the ones asking you to switch something off.

Here is what is actually available, and it is smaller and truer than a boundary. The phone stays on. And you are not the only one awake in that arrangement.

The honest half: this does not make you less tired. Being on call is genuinely tiring and no verse changes physiology, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. And if the tiredness has gone past ordinary into something that is affecting your body over a long stretch, that is worth telling a doctor, which is a practical thing and not a spiritual failure.

There is a part only you can do, and it takes no time and requires no boundary. The phone stays exactly where it has to be. And you say one sentence over it.