I’m not sure where I was when I first heard this statement, but someone addressed a group of ministry leaders I was with at a conference and said: “For some of you, the most spiritual thing you could do right now is take a nap.” (Perhaps it was Mike Yaconelli at a Youth Specialties Conference…sounds like something Mike would have said, eh?!)
I remember being humored by the statement but not heeding the admonition. Perhaps that was because I was still in my early twenties and convinced that I could rise above the normal human experience and be more “productive” with my time. Sleep seemed like an obstacle in my path of maximum accomplishment.
As I reflect on this subject and share my thoughts, I am cloistered away for a weekend of spiritual retreat and soul keeping. The fall quarter of campus activity is about to begin at the University of Cincinnati where I’m engaged in the sharing of life, faith, ministry, hospitality, etc. One of the lessons that I’ve learned having survived my second and third decades of life is that there is indeed something spiritual about sleep and rest. In even more general terms, everything about life is spiritual in that there is nothing that escapes God’s concern and sovereignty.
Back in 2006, Lauren Winner wrote an insightful article for Books & Culture on this very topic which you can read here. At one point she links to the National Sleep Foundation whose mission is to “Wake America to the Importance of sleep.” Catchy, huh?! One of Lauren’s emphases focuses on the motivation that is often behind our choice to sleep less: work and productivity. However subtle the implications may be, our desire to be more productive and driven ignores the way in which our bodies were created and designed to thrive.
Not many texts in the Bible deal with sleep directly but often use it as a metaphor (be watchful and prepared in 1 Thess 5, don’t be lazy in Proverbs, etc). But if we take the humanity of Jesus seriously, we cannot ignore what it means to flourish as human beings. Psalm 127 indicates that sleep is a gift: “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” So sleep is not a weakness to overcome in our quest for greater productivity. Sleep is a gift which we must steward well so that our waking hours will find us at optimal health. 
For college students, there may indeed be seasons which demand more sleepless nights than other. Many times, however, this condition is self-inflicted. One of the toughest challenges a new college student faces is time management and academic discipline. But to be fair, as Dr. Breus points out in his recent article “A New Challenge for College Students: The Freshman 8, Not 15!” the new environment, new freedoms, and new influences all contribute to reducing the average college students’ sleep schedule to about 6 hours of sleep per night. And I often hear of students claiming much less than that during a normal week of classes(especially DAAP students here in Cincinnati).
Unfortunately, there are many daily life choices and issues which we tend to separate into a “that’s not spiritual” kind of category. In that list we might include sleep, food choices, spending habits, vocation, time management, etc. The truth is that God is not limited to the kind of systematic categorizations and compartments into which we are capable of chopping and distributing our lives. In fact, God is keenly interested in every aspect of life, including the roughly one-third of our day which most experts agree we should be sleeping.
Since being well rested impacts our relationships, our attitudes, our faithfulness to academic and vocational pursuits, and many other areas of our lives…getting a good night’s sleep could be one of the most spiritual things you do today.
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