“In vain you get up early and stay up late, working hard to have enough food— yes, he gives sleep to the one he loves.” (Psalm 127:2 CSB)
Devotional
Most of us wear exhaustion like proof that we are taking life seriously.
Solomon, of all people, is the one writing this. A king with more resources than almost anyone in history to guarantee his own security, and he is the one who says the extra hours, the early mornings and the late nights spent white-knuckling our way to enough, are, in his exact word, vain. Not admirable. Not responsible. Vain, which means empty, without the substance we assume it has.
I want to be careful here, because this is not a verse against work. Scripture has plenty to say elsewhere about diligence and the dignity of labour. What Solomon is naming is something narrower and more familiar than that: the anxious striving that assumes if I just push a little harder, stay up a little later, I can secure what only God can actually provide. That kind of effort is not really trust in disguise. It is worry wearing work clothes.
And then that last line, almost tender by comparison. Yes, he gives sleep to the one he loves. Sleep, of all things. Not a promotion, not a windfall, but rest, ordinary and unremarkable, given as a gift to people God loves. There is something in that I need to hear, because I have treated rest like something I have to earn by finishing everything first, rather than something God simply gives to people he already loves, whether or not the list is done.
I am not writing this as someone who has this figured out. Most weeks I still measure my worth by how tired I am at the end of it. But this verse is not scolding that impulse. It is inviting me to notice that the anxious hours might be adding less than I think, and that rest was never something I had to prove myself worthy of first.
Reflection
I measure my effort by exhaustion more than I would like to admit, as if being tired proves I care enough. I want to notice this week where my striving is really just anxiety wearing the costume of hard work. Rest is not something I have to earn from a God who already loves me.
Prayer
Father, we confess we treat exhaustion like proof of faithfulness, when you never asked that of us. Thank you for giving rest to people you love, not to people who have finished every task first. Help us tell the difference between honest work and anxious striving. Teach us to receive rest as a gift rather than something we have to earn.