{"id":4165,"date":"2024-11-07T09:26:39","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T14:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4165"},"modified":"2024-11-07T09:27:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T14:27:18","slug":"nap-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/07\/nap-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Nap Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>

In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev agonized for days over the puzzle of how to arrange the known elements.

Sleepiness finally overcame him.

When he awoke after a few hours, the solution suddenly presented itself. \u201cI saw in a dream how to arrange everything.\u201d It was the world\u2019s first rendition of what we now call the periodic table.

That was a whale of a good nap.

Something similar happened in 1923 to Dr. Frederick Banting, the Canadian scientist who was struggling with how to deliver the life-saving gift of insulin to diabetics. He finally fell sound asleep in his lab. When he awoke, he approached his desk and saw the solution written out in his own handwriting \u2013 something that had apparently happened during his nap.  

Mendeleev and Banting already \u201cknew\u201d the answers to the questions they were addressing. They simply had to relax sufficiently to be able to share their own history-changing insights with themselves.

Sleep, it turns out, is one of our greatest sources of healing and growth. Practicing good sleep habits is like hitting a \u201creset\u201d button on our most critical neurological and psychological functions.

Those are the convictions of Dr. Jade Wu, a clinical psychologist specializing in sleep behavior. She has an especially high regard for the practice of calling a halt to our oh-so-important lives in the middle of the day and catching a few Z\u2019s. \u201cNapping,\u201d she insists, \u201cmight be a superpower.\u201d

A lot of other people agree. Salvador Dali was convinced that short naps helped him paint. Winston Churchill used to schedule meetings of Parliament around his afternoon sleep breaks. Historic photos show Thomas Edison napping in various nooks and crannies of his workshop.

Europeans take naps. So do Asians. Those who live south of our border famously enjoy daily siestas. This seems to be entirely consistent with human biological rhythms. Who in the world would dare to resist such deep wisdom?

Well, that would be the residents of the United States.

Napping just seems, somehow, un-American. Our technological and cultural expectations tell us to keep working \u2013 to power through that natural mid-afternoon dip in energy. \u201cLife is short and I\u2019m not going to waste the day sleeping,\u201d one young mom told Dr. Wu \u2013 even as her toddler, at that very moment, was enjoying a refreshing nap.

\u201cI\u2019ll sleep when I am dead,\u201d said another person. Wu\u2019s studies suggest that many Americans feel a sense of shame about being unproductive, and associate nap-taking with laziness.

But the scientific evidence points overwhelmingly in the other direction: Naps actually increase<\/em> productivity. They improve cognitive awareness. This is demonstrably true for steelworkers, accountants, athletes, babies, and pastors who write morning reflections.

That\u2019s right: I am a \u201chappy napper\u201d almost every afternoon. And that\u2019s not just because I make my home in Indianap<\/u><\/em>olis, the original Nap Town.

It\u2019s quite possible that physical exhaustion is the number one inhibitor of spiritual growth.

Human souls and bodies are intimately interconnected. We can hardly study diligently, pray fervently, and listen attentively to others if we\u2019re struggling to stay awake. 

Nevertheless, a number of Christ-followers push back: What if I\u2019m asleep when Jesus needs me to be awake, keeping watch with him?

His original band of disciples, after all, failed him miserably on the last night before his crucifixion. He pleaded for their support in the Garden of Gethsemane. Would they be willing to pray for him while he wrestled alone with the task of embracing the monumental burden of pain and humiliation that lay just ahead?

Jesus returned to his disciples, only to find them sound asleep. “Couldn’t you stick it out with me for a single hour?” he asked. He then added, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).

There\u2019s a lot more going on here than just physical weariness. The disciples had essentially stepped into the batter’s box against a major league pitcher, hoping they might be able to swing wildly at a 98-mph fastball and somehow get a hit. 

But they hadn’t practiced prayer. They hadn’t practiced waiting. They hadn’t practiced wrestling with God. They weren’t ready, in other words, for the spiritual big leagues.

Eugene Peterson, in his Bible paraphrase called The Message<\/em>, offers this memorable rendering of the same verse: “Stay alert; be in prayer so you don’t wander into temptation without even knowing you’re in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there\u2019s another part that\u2019s as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire.\u201d

What can we do?  

We can shape our lives around a few simple disciplines, like taking the time to read Scripture, offering prayers of thanks and intercession, and presenting ourselves to God as best we can, quietly, every day.

And we can take care of the bodies God has graciously given to us by eating well, exercising regularly, and choosing to get enough sleep.

That can include naps.

As Jade Wu points out, \u201cNapping is like a performance-enhancing drug without the drug part.\u201d 

It doesn\u2019t make sense to feel so tired that we\u2019re of no value for either the things of heaven or the things of earth. 

I\u2019ll nap to that.<\/em>
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev agonized for days over the puzzle of how to arrange the known elements. Sleepiness finally overcame him. When he awoke after a few hours, the solution suddenly presented itself. \u201cI saw in a dream how to arrange everything.\u201d It was the world\u2019s first rendition of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[834,833],"class_list":["post-4165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-disciplines","tag-sleep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4165"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4168,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4165\/revisions\/4168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}