I asked to sleep in the hayloft in June and I slept in the hayloft in July, and between June and July there was quite a lot of thinking.
The asking was easy. Asking is always easy. You ask for a thing in a warm kitchen in the middle of the afternoon with everybody about, and it sounds like an adventure and it is an adventure and you mean it entirely.
My dad said yes straight away, which I had not expected and which I have since realized was on purpose, because a person who says yes straight away is not going to be there to blame later.
He said one condition, which was that if I came in I came in, and that nobody in this house would ever say a single word about it either way. He said that twice.
So on the fourth of July I took a blanket and a flashlight up that ladder at about nine o'clock and I was extremely pleased with myself until about eleven.
Here is what I found out. A barn is not quiet. A barn at night is about four hundred small noises and every single one of them has a reason, and I know the reasons in the daytime and at eleven at night the reasons are not available and only the noises are.
Between eleven and one I did the whole of it. I identified nine different things by sound, incorrectly. I had a period of about twenty minutes where I made a plan for getting down the ladder fast. And I did not use the plan, and I want to say that I did not use it because I was brave and I do not think that is true. I think I did not use it because getting down that ladder in the dark was worse than staying.
At about one o'clock Bucky came up.
He cannot get up that ladder. I have seen him fail to get up that ladder eleven times. On that night he got up it, and he lay down about four feet away with his back to me the way he does, and he had no opinion about any of it whatsoever, and he went to sleep immediately.
I went to sleep after that. I am not going to say the goat is why, and I am also not going to pretend it was not.
I have slept up there nineteen times since. It takes about four minutes now.
The reason is at the end of the verse
David writes a short line about going to sleep, and the whole verse turns on the word at the end.
I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety. (Psalm 4:8)
For thou, LORD, only. The reason he can lie down is not that the situation is resolved. This psalm is written while he is complaining to God about people who are against him, which is right there in the first few verses.
And the word only is the sharp one. Not chiefly. Not as well as the other precautions. Only, which means every other source of safety a person could name has been considered and found to be somebody else's job.
You are being made to dwell in safety by somebody rather than achieving it, and Psalm 4:8 puts the word only in the sentence. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as rest rather than as a doctrine.
That is worth being exact about at nine years old and at fifty, because being safe and feeling safe are two different things and only one of them is promised.
You have not been promised a feeling. The written word says He makes a person dwell in safety and says nothing at all about how the night sounds, and His Spirit is what makes the difference between those two survivable at eleven o'clock.
The noises are not the problem
There is a moment in the gospels where the people in a boat get told something about what they had actually been afraid of.
And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? (Mark 4:40)
That question gets read as a rebuke and it is worth reading as a diagnosis. They were in a real storm. The water was really coming in and Mark says so, and He does not tell them the storm was imaginary.
What He asks about is the fear rather than the weather, which suggests the fear had a separate existence from the storm, which anybody who has been awake at eleven at night already knows.
You are able to have a real situation and a separate fear about it, and Mark 4:40 asks about the second one. The Spirit of God is what makes that distinction useful rather than shaming.
And He had been asleep in that boat during the whole of it, on a pillow, which Mark bothers to mention.
You have been given a picture of somebody asleep in the middle of the noise. Mark 4:38 records the pillow on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from a lake into a hayloft between eleven and one.
So here is what I know about a hayloft between eleven and one.
You are not proved wrong by a bad two hours, and Psalm 4:8 promises being made to dwell in safety rather than promising a quiet night. The Holy Spirit is what keeps that from being a technicality and makes it the reason a boy stays up a ladder.
I did not stay because I was brave. I want that in, and I have thought about whether to put it in, and the answer is that a child reading this deserves the true version. I stayed because going down was worse than staying, and that is a completely ordinary reason and it counted anyway.
You have been given somebody who makes the dwelling safe rather than a feeling that says so. Psalm 4:8 uses the word only, which rules out every other source, and His Spirit is what makes an exclusive word like that a comfort instead of a limit.
And this is for whoever is reading it out at bedtime, who has their own eleven o'clock and has had it for years. You were never being asked to identify every noise. Mark 4:38 has Him asleep on a pillow in the middle of a real storm, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that a picture a person can lie down inside.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over a bad two hours is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God is named as the only one who makes a person dwell in safety, so speak to the hours: you have standing to address them because He is the one doing the keeping. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Psalm 4:8 and Mark 4:40 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Hours between eleven and one, you are not proof that anything is wrong. The Word of God says I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou LORD only makest me dwell in safety.
- Noises I cannot name in the dark, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am kept and I am staying where I asked to be, because Mark 4:40 asks about the fear rather than about the storm and treats them as two separate things.
- Father, You have never once promised me a quiet night. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word uses the word only, which rules out everything else I have ever tried to be safe by.
Psalm 4:8
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