UN/Broken - Day 31

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:40-41

Sleep is a big deal for our health across multiple body systems. “Adverse outcomes of insufficient sleep and/or sleep disorders are weight gain and obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, accidents and injuries, stress, pain, neurocognitive dysfunction, psychiatric symptoms, and mortality” (Grandner, 2017, p. 1). That list is worth re-reading and saying, “I need to be kind to myself and get adequate and regular sleep, or go to a sleep medicine clinic if that is not happening despite my best efforts.”

Presumably, Jesus had some insight into the importance of sleep. Still, it is obvious he had more immediately essential things on his mind and hoped to get social support from those he trusted.

Another effect of sleep deprivation could have been impairing the disciples’ support of Jesus in his greatest hour of need. An experiment compared the moral reasoning of partially sleep-deprived military officers to those who had normal sleep and found that moral sense was compromised, with the greatest decrease in officers who usually had the highest moral reasoning (Olson, et al., 2010).

It is impossible to know what the state of the disciples’ sleep had been recently, but its not hard to imagine the passion week had filled them with excited anticipation with late nights filled with discussions about where it might all be heading.

Echoing Jesus’ words, a willing spirit needs the flesh to be well-rested, so get your proper sleep.