A Prayer for the Exhausted Lord, I come before You with another request to defy the laws of physics and to stretch tonight lengthwise, inserting unbeknownst to the keenest atomic chronometers a few extra hours of sleep. Let all those who are exhausted be replenished. Let this gift be dispersed indiscriminately, without regard for the cause or extent of fatigue. Comfort no less the aged, who suffer sleeplessness due to bodily aches that rouse them in the night, than young parents who sacrifice sleep to work two jobs and for whom sleep becomes a restless guilt, conceding the time at home they give to their children is lacking in the basic elements that would otherwise lead to what we shall euphemistically refer to as "positive life outcomes". Lord, quiet their children and let the parents sleep, if only an extra fifteen minutes. As for those who drag and stumble through the day due to an indomitable exercise of poor choice, who through drunken revelry or drug-induced catatonia dissipate entire nights without registry in memory, relieve them too, O Lord, for the all-encompassing sleep I have in mind cannot discern good from evil. Let it slide dreamlessly across the land like a fog or a wave of oblivion. In its wake, let the people of the world rise renewed. It is, at best, a temporary remedy I request. Its value shall be spent by the end of the day, but I ask it all the same because, in the depths of exhaustion, each minute is an eternity not to be rejected. |
A Prayer for the Exhausted David Keffer Knoxville, TN October 30, 2014 |