#88-The Church Sleeper

The Battle

One of the greatest challenges in life is entering a church service with less than 4 hours of sleep under your belt and trying to stay awake the entire service...

The battles between staying awake or dozing off for a few z's during church can be quite momentous....Usually the first question before engaging in battle is whether or not the battle is even worth it....if you are wise, you sit in the back corner of the sanctuary where face time to other people is minimal. So if you do fall asleep, a few people at most will be able to spot your error....

But for most of us, this luxury is not realistic for we as young people do not want to be thought of as on the way out church backsliders, for only on the way out-church backsliders really sit in the dark crevices, clefts, and back rows of the sanctuary ... and this brings about the battles between sleep and awake, death and life, being worldly or being holy.

We struggle, we wrestle, we find our eyelids fading fast over our eyeballs....we even try different strategies to find the right arm angle to support our tired heads and block potential sleep-catchers should we accidentally fall asleep.

Of course the worst kind of losing battle in church is when we do not have any head support and our heads bob slowly down in front of us as we fall into the great abyss of sleep, and in one traumatic instance our body mistakes our head falling as our entire body being violently thrown into the depths of hell, so our body convulses and jerks back up like lightning from heaven, which of course makes us become awake, and wondering how noticeable our head jerk into consciousness was to those around us.....

You quickly glance around, and see that no one notices that we were sleeping....except for those 1-2 people staring at us smiling and giggling at you....30 seconds later, your fighting the battle all over....

The Champion of our Hearts

I said all of the above to say this...

There is one amongst us who is more courageous than us all...

He sees the potential battle between consciousness and sleep within a church service and is honest with himself and his environment from the get go and knows the cause is a losing effort.

So before the battle even begins, this champion forfeits all rights of battle and elects to go where only a few have the guts to go to:

Unrepentant, non-secretive, heavy nap sleeping during church.

And it's not once in a blue moon this champion chooses to sleep roughly 90% of the sermon length, but rather quite consistently...

Like almost every service consistently...This man/woman is the church sleeper.....

 

Every church has one...should you be part of the unfortunate church who does not have one, I suggest you go to your local elementary school's 4th grade play and find the one man who above all else is crouched in his chair completely immune to the noise and commotion around him of loud children and corny jokes, and sleeps his little heart out...

And these church sleepers....as hinted at above, their church sleeping is no joke...The kind of sleep they find themselves in appears to be those rare kind of deep sleeps that only God himself and Hurricane Katrina could intervene....

The last question I have is this....judging from the genuine lack of any paranoia of being caught sleeping in church whatsoever from the church sleeper, I wonder if these church sleepers show up in church for the sole purpose of knowing it is the one place in this messy world where they know they can receive the appropriate amount of soothing sermonizing and shelter that some need to fall asleep.

And thus, if the above is true, I argue that the church has found just one more ministry that it provides for the lonely and scared populations of our society: A place of not only spiritual rest, but also physical rest as well....

And that is why I think each church should provide the sleep ministry that is closely integrated with the leg-covering ministry for those slain in the spirit. Wherein the church does not charge the church sleeper(s) to sleep in it's pew during service (where as a hotel would charge to let a guest sleep in it's room) and further provides the sleeper with a blanket and pillow to use during service....

In exchange for this service/ministry, it is the church sleeper who is required to place the blankets and sheets  and what not on top of those slain in the spirit. Perhaps the church sleeper could place a few pillows under the heads of those slain when he/she is not using them to get their nap on...

Just a thought...