bed

Psalm 4:4 - In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.

There's nothing like a cool sheet after a warm day. Conversely, there is nothing like a warm blanket when it's cold outside and Jack Frost is nipping at your nose, or toes, or however it goes.

I don't feel like I have anything terribly deep or thoughtful to say here, but if one wanted to ask me a verse that I live by (or at least try to, after all: I'm only human) on a daily basis, Psalm 4:4 would be in the list. 

I am personally always fascinated when I see commercials for beds on television. To me, a bed is such an intimate and personal thing, it is almost weird to see it advertised in such a casual manner, but I suppose someone has to sell them. And sell them I did. For a short while, I was put on a project at a major retailer you've all heard of to sell mattresses to people over the phone. It wasn't a terribly busy job that required a lot of work out of me (maybe one call every thirty minutes), but I took it seriously. It would perplex me when people would opt for the cheapest model (I'm talking under $100) we had: a bed I deemed to look and feel a lot like thick cardboard. This particular bed model even had a kitschy name to match, but I'll save the company some bad advertising. At any rate, these beds were usually returned with the customer stating "this is like sleeping on thick cardboard." It made me happy to know people valued what they slept on. I think it is important for a place that is crucial and vital to our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being to be comfortable.

There are a lot of metonymic uses for the word bed, all of them centering around passion, love, or rest. Those could be synonymous with one another, though: to me, there is fervent passion in rest. When I finally get to my worn-in spot on my bed I put the thoughts and emotions of the day on display in my mind. I will scout over the moments that stuck out, both the good and the bad. The good I cherish and lift up in prayer with gratitude. The bad I allow to convict me, and a much different prayer follows.

We are most vulnerable when we sleep. Not only are we almost completely oblivious to our surroundings at this moment, but a lot of processing goes on in our mind, both conscious and subconscious. It's important to heed the Scriptures and not let oneself go to sleep before you make the decision to forgive and forget. It's almost as if the reset button is hit on your emotions once the blasted alarm goes off and you awake to face the next day. I sometimes feel like I am the only one who finds it hard to get there sometimes. When we are angered it feels natural to instantly lash out or respond in a manner that would be deemed as sinful (an angry outburst, a harsh word towards someone else, or even a physical altercation in the most extreme of circumstances), but it is important we guard our emotions and put things on the shelf so they can be pulled off and sorted when it is best for us to do so and not in the moment.

Perhaps this is just one of the few straight-forward physiological lessons the Bible sets out to teach us: it is best to deal with your anger not at the moment you become angry, but in your bed before you go to sleep. Mmm, science.