METAPHORS ON DEATH AND DLYING: SLEEP

Did you have a good sleep? I have been asked that many times. It wouldn’t be a good one if I didn’t wake up. Or could it be good?

One of the most powerful metaphors for a Christian’s death occurs in the 11^th chapter of the book of John in the Bible. We read that Jesus said to the disciples: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go and wake him up. However, the disciples thought that he meant “natural sleep” so Jesus told them plainly “Lazarus is dead.”

Job was distressed with his boils and sickness and wanted to die, wishing even that he had died in his mother’s womb. He would then have been at rest, “sleeping like a stillborn child,” (Job 3.16) He said that when such people die: “They will never stir from their sleep.” (Job 14.12).

David, on the other hand, believed that God was protecting him in his sleep, and that it was peaceful (Psalm 3.5, 4.8).

Proverbs warns about too much literal sleep: it is a disgrace to sleep during a harvest (10.5); and too much of it can lead to becoming poor. (19.15, 20.13, 23.21)

However, out of our sleep of death comes our resurrection, as foretold in Isaiah 26.19: “Those of our people who have died will live again! Their bodies will come back to life. All those sleeping in their graves will wake up and sing for joy. As the sparkling dew refreshes the earth, so the Lord will revive those who have long been dead.

Jesus raised a little girl that everyone thought was dead (Matthew 26.45: Mark 5.39; Luke 8.52) and they mocked him when he said, “The little girl is not dead—she is only sleeping!”

We can also be “asleep” in the sense that we are unaware of what is happening around us and Paul warned of this condition when he said, “the time has come for you to wake up from your sleep. For the moment when we will be saved is closer now than it was when we first believed.” (Romans 12.11)

“Sleeping in death” is a metaphor that Paul used and boldly proclaimed in 1 Corinthians 15.20: “But the truth is that Christ has been raised from death, as the guarantee that those who sleep in death will also be raised.” We are to “Wake up, sleeper, and rise from death, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5.14) 

When we fall “asleep” we do not grieve like those who have no hope because we “have fallen asleep in him.” (1 Thessalonians 4.13-14)

A Papua New Guinea friend of mine often told me when we met in the morning, that he “slept like a dead man,” a very apt idiom for having “a good night’s sleep.” We also say that we “slept lie a baby.” An Aussie friend used to tell me, when he was tired and about to go to bed, “they won’t have to rock me.”

On the other hand, someone may say that the “didn’t sleep a wink” last night, which is probably not true literally, but does indicate a poor night of sleep.

When we are about to go to bed, we might say that we are going to “hit the hay,” “hit the sack,” or get some “shuteye” and we may in turn be told to “sleep tight” (and, when I was a kid to “don’t let the bedbugs bite”).

I do not believe I will stay asleep after I die. I believe that God will take me in a new body immediately to heaven because “If our hope in Christ is good for this life only and no more, then we deserve more pity than anyone else in all the world.” (1 Corinthians 15.19).

Sleep is a beautiful metaphor for dying because when we sleep, we also expect to wake up again. I believe I will be in heaven when that finally happens.

Karl Franklin