We’ve all been there. You’re tired from the day’s work, so ready to hit the hay. But guess what? Before your head can touch that good soft pillow, your eyes go wide-open, and your mind starts to think in kaleidoscope: a litany of chores undone, bills to pay, then you are too hot or too cold, tossing and turning, back to the beginning all over again. Well, welcome to the “wide-eye” syndrome. And life itself is a little like that. You started out with such high hopes and ambitions, but then real life begins to happen. You or a member of your family gets sick, you lose your job, good plans are interrupted, someone mistreats you badly and on and on. Problems succeed themselves. but there are moments of respite, and thank God for them. For most of us, however, life is a steady stream of “wide-eyes.” But when you finally go to sleep after a restless night, how good it feels to wake up refreshed and ready for a new day. It was Shakespeare who said, “Sleep knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care.”
And there’s an analogy here. If we have walked with the Lord, kept the faith, fought the good fight, and finished the course, the close of life is the dawning of the real New Day. A long, sweet rest, no more restless nights and questionable days. The Wide-Eye Syndrome will be banished for all time because Eternity will have begun for us. Peace will be sweet, and rest will be forever.
“By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”
--from William Cullen Bryant’s Thanatopsis
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