The following comes from the pen of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), pastor, theologian, and prime minister of the Netherlands. It’s a devotional work entitled To Be Near Unto God. And you don’t have to be a card-carrying Neo-Calvinist to appreciate it!
“NIGHT is a mystery in our life, and remains a mystery. For years together, sleep to most people is a provisional going out from life, in order after some seven or eight hours to come back to it. When they fall asleep, which most people do immediately after their head touches the pillow, they are gone, and when the hand on the dial of the clock has moved on a given number of hours, they rise and resume their part in life. At most they have an occasional remembrance of a dream that entered into their sleep, but for the rest it is all a blank. The seven hours during which they were lost in unconsciousness passed by unobserved, and as far as their remembrance of them goes they amounted to no more than two or at most three hours.
“Thus a third of life is taken out of their existence. When they are thirty years of age, they have actually lived but twenty, and the other ten years are wrapped in the haziness of sleep.
“This sleep, however, was not devoid of purpose. He who was weary on retiring, rises girded with new strength, though as far as his consciousness goes, he was idle. His thinking, feeling, willing, working, have all been at a stand-still. This absolute surcease of life is the normal state of things, for as long as man is well, in the fullness of his strength and not oppressed by cares, he sleeps as long as nothing disturbs him from without.
“Why this was so ordained, remains a riddle. For though it is true that after hours of work our strength becomes exhausted and demands rest to recuperate, this does not solve the problem. For at once the question arises: “Why this exhaustion of strength?” God, our Maker, after Whose Image weare created fainteth not, neither is He weary. The heavenly hosts of angels do not sleep. Of the New Jerusalem we read: “And there shall be no night there” (Rev. 22: 5). Thus, a being who does not continually exhaust his strength, and hence is in no need of sleep, is conceivable. Why God, our Maker, appointed a life for us with continual exhaustion of its power to be restored by sleep, remains a mystery. This ordinance of the Lord has not been promulgated without a purpose and a wise design, though no one understands it.”
Read the rest of the chapter here.
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