So many of us struggle with restless nights. Several years ago I posted a “Prayer When I Can’t Sleep,” which I’m sharing again today, along with a reflection about praying in “the night watches.” These dark and quiet hours are particularly vulnerable times. They can open us to surrender, self-offering—even praise—if we can transform them from empty moments of worry and frustration into vigils of prayer and connection.
From the October issue of Give Us This Day, shared here with permission.
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Holy One, Maker of the Stars,
In the beginning there was only darkness,
And your wind swept across the face of the deep.
Tonight I see this darkness. I hear its silence.
I feel its emptiness. It surrounds me.
In my home all is still except my mind.
Sweep across me, Holy One, whole and entire,
Across every undone thing in me, every unresolved thought,
Every restless rustling of my soul, every ache and pain of my tired body.
Speak with your creative breath into my night,
Speak the light of your presence into every crack and crevice,
So I may have peace and sleep, and wake to the gentle hope of morning.
Praying Through the Night
When the psalmist couldn’t sleep, he prayed.
He prayed in his bed, he prayed on his couch, he prayed in the sanctuary and under the stars. He cried aloud, he wept, he stretched out his hands, groaned, pondered, meditated, and exhorted. He blessed God. He felt God’s hand upon him. He remembered God’s name and proclaimed God’s faithfulness. And according to the psalms, he did all of this “by night,” in “the watches of the night,” or even “all night.” (See, for example, Psalms 6, 63, and 77.)
Most of us have struggled at one time or another with falling or staying asleep. Lying awake at night can feel frustrating, wasteful, and lonely. But the middle of the night has traditionally been a fruitful, even intentional, time for prayer. In some religious communities, rising in “the watches of the night” to pray is customary.
The nighttime hours are dark and quiet, with fewer distractions than our full and busy days. If we live with others, they are likely asleep. We are not needed. We won’t be interrupted. There is nothing we need to accomplish. In the stillness and silence, we can turn our full attention inward, to our hearts, and raise our hands outward, to our God.
The dark of night can feel oppressive, but we can learn to experience it biblically—as the “original darkness” before creation, from which light sprang forth and life overflowed, out of which the relationship between God and human beings emerged. Darkness may feel like a void, but it is the void that gives way to all that lives.
The darkness of our sleepless nights teems with potential. Our wakefulness can become a vigil, our restlessness an invitation, our silence a summons to the Maker of the Stars to speak in us with the same creative breath that swept across the original darkness. In keeping this vigil, our own darkness may be filled with light—the light of Christ that cannot be extinguished.
And so it is that in the watches of the night, we may come to share another experience of the psalmist—faith that in the presence of God who neither slumbers nor sleeps, darkness is not dark at all, for the night shines like the day (Ps 121:4; 139:12).
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Amy Ekeh, from the October 2024 issue of Give Us This Day, www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2024). Used with permission.
Prayer vigils. Photo by Tim Vineyard.
