When I Sit and When I Rise
November 2023 Devotional
You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. – Psalm 139:1-3
I grew up in a big “sleepover” culture. When I lived in Brazil, I spent nights with my cousins, playing games and roaming around the farm, looking at the animals in the morning. After moving to the States, I had a buddy who would come over regularly, or I’d go to his place, and we’d play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and make brownies. As I got older, most of my summer weekends were spent with a friend, staying over and talking late into the night. To this day, I tend to sleep a little better with a friend in the room.
Wesley Hill mentions that one of the heartaches of the celibate life is a life unwitnessed.
I feel this most strongly in the mornings and the evenings - in the quiet moments when I’m alone with the burdens of the day, trying to rest. I turn off my lights and climb under my comforter, with nothing but my breathing and the echoing of my thoughts. It’s in these moments that celibacy can feel less like a gift and more like a sorrow.
That’s when I try to remember that my Sweet Jesus knows “when I sit and when I rise…” The heartache of a life unwitnessed is real, but the good news is that my life is not unwitnessed. As David says, my Lord knows my “laying down.” I’ve started trying to make that belief into a lived practice… as I wake up in the morning, before I really open my eyes and rub away the bleariness, I say to the Lord, “Good morning Jesus.” Under my covers, protecting me from the cold November air, I talk to Him about my thoughts - the stresses that come up as I think about my day, the bizarre dream I had the night before, the conflict with a friend that hangs over me.
I won’t over-spiritualize it - we need people, all of us do. Still, we need a life witnessed by God. We need to know that someone is “familiar with all [our] ways” and that we are not strangers to the King we serve. He knows our sleep-breathing and our morning breath, and He is close to us as the lights go off.
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