Joyful on Their Beds

What We Carry Into the Night

Let the faithful rejoice in triumph; let them be joyful on their beds.

Turn away the reproach which I dread, because your judgments are good.

— Psalms 149 and 119

I have probably read these Psalms dozens of times in my life, and encountered them many more times in church. Yet these particular lines never struck me quite as they did today.

“Let them be joyful on their beds.”

Bed is not always where I have been most joyful.

Over the arc of my life, being in bed has usually meant being there alone, or at least experiencing some measure of loneliness. It is also where worries can become louder. During the day there are things to do, people to see and places to go. Then the house becomes quiet. I notice my pulse. I hear noises. Something somebody said hours earlier, which barely registered at the time, suddenly returns for another hearing.

Sleeplessness can feed anxiety, and anxiety feeds sleeplessness. The night stretches out before you, and eventually you begin watching for some hint of daylight.

Psalm 119 knows something about that interior life too:

“Turn away the reproach which I dread.”

I appreciate the honesty of that word: dread.

Reproach hurts. Ridicule hurts. Being dismissed hurts. Sometimes even a teasing remark offered without malicious intent finds an unexpectedly tender place. We may shrug it off during the day, but the mind remembers. So does the body.

I witnessed something much more profound during my mother's decline: sundowning, when the approach of evening itself could bring confusion and distress. It gave me a terrible glimpse of how frightening nighttime can become when the mind no longer experiences darkness as peaceful.

Perhaps that is one reason this little verse in Psalm 149 seems so beautiful to me now.

Imagine becoming joyful in bed.

My dear friend and spiritual mentor Arvel Tate, Jr.—Junior—said something in Sunday School nearly forty years ago that I've never forgotten. Sometimes when he couldn't sleep, he said, he would remember to use the time for prayer. Before long, he was glad he was awake.

What a transformation.

The circumstances haven't necessarily changed. It is still dark. Morning may still be hours away. The problem that bothered you at bedtime may still be waiting tomorrow.

But now you have time with God.

You can pray. Remember Scripture. Listen. Let the quiet become something other than an empty space waiting for worry to fill it.

I think of Ebenezer Scrooge awakening on Christmas morning after his long night of reckoning. He is alone in his bedroom, but suddenly the room is filled with joy. He laughs. He celebrates. He is positively delighted to discover that morning has come—and then determines to carry that joy into the rest of his life.

Maybe our joy muscles need exercise too.

We cannot eliminate every reproach, nor can we guarantee ourselves eight peaceful hours every night. But perhaps we can become more practiced at deciding what gets to accompany us into the darkness.

We've encountered some wonderfully simple instructions in these recent readings: Listen. Look. Lift up your eyes. Seek peace. Practice genuine love.

Those things still work after midnight.

And perhaps, little by little, the bed that once magnified the day's reproaches can become another place where we discover shalom.

The faithful can even be joyful there.

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