Mike Focht read this to me the other day. It’s by a guy named William Law, who (as you can tell by his language) wrote in the 1700s, and he found it in From the Library of A.W. Tozer: Selected Writers who Influenced His Spiritual Journey.
It’s not really the kind of stuff we’re used to reading, but sometimes we need a saint from days past to point out things we take for granted and shake us up a little bit. Really, how many of us regularly waste the morning hours in bed because we stay up late the night before doing…what…TV? YouTube? Gaming?
Here’s what Mr. Law has to say about that…
I come now to consider that part of devotion which relates to times and
hours of prayer.
I take it for granted, that every Christian, that is in health, is up
early in the morning; for it is much more reasonable to suppose a
person up early, because he is a Christian, than because he is a
labourer, or a tradesman, or a servant, or has business that wants him.
We naturally conceive some abhorrence of a man that is in bed when he
should be at his labor or in his shop. We cannot tell how to think
anything good of him, who is such a slave to drowsiness as to neglect
his business for it.
Let this therefore teach us to conceive how odious we must appear in
the sight of Heaven, if we are in bed, shut up in sleep and darkness,
when we should be praising God; and are such slaves to drowsiness, as
to neglect our devotions for it.
For if he is to be blamed as a slothful drone, that rather chooses the
lazy indulgence of sleep, than to perform his proper share of worldly
business; how much more is he to be reproached, that would rather lie
folded up in a bed, than be raising up his heart to God in acts of
praise and adoration!
Prayer is the nearest approach to God, and the highest enjoyment of
Him, that we are capable of in this life.
It is the noblest exercise of the soul, the most exalted use of our
best faculties, and the highest imitation of the blessed inhabitants of
Heaven.
When our hearts are full of God, sending up holy desires to the throne
of grace, we are then in our highest state, we are upon the utmost
heights of human greatness; we are not before kings and princes, but in
the presence and audience of the Lord of all the world, and can be no
higher, till death is swallowed up in glory.
On the other hand, sleep is the poorest, dullest refreshment of the
body, that is so far from being intended as an enjoyment, that we are
forced to receive it either in a state of insensibility, or in the
folly of dreams.
Sleep is such a dull, stupid state of existence, that even amongst mere
animals, we despise them most which are most drowsy.
He, therefore, that chooses to enlarge the slothful indulgence of
sleep, rather than be early at his devotions to God, chooses the
dullest refreshment of the body, before the highest, noblest employment
of the soul; he chooses that state which is a reproach to mere animals,
rather than that exercise which is the glory of Angels.