When You Can’t Sleep Until It’s Handled

Twenty to one in the morning.

The evening is over. The house has gone quiet, and the phone is face down on the nightstand, though it’s been turned over more than once. Whatever was supposed to get settled tonight is still sitting there, unsettled. And you’re still up with it.

A lot of us don’t let ourselves sleep until it’s handled. Rest is something you earn by getting your hands around the problem. If you can’t fix it tonight, the least you can do is stay awake with it.

There’s an old story about a prisoner who had nothing handled, on the last night before his trial. He was asleep.

This happened in Jerusalem, a few years after Jesus was put to death. His followers were a small group then, meeting in each other’s houses. The king, a man named Herod, decided to go after them.

He started with James, a fisherman who had been one of the first people Jesus called. Herod had him killed with the sword. The story says this pleased the people Herod wanted to please, so he arrested Peter next.

Peter was a fisherman too, James’s old partner from the same lake. Years before, he’d promised to follow Jesus to prison and to death, and then, on the worst night of his life, told a girl at a door that he wasn’t one of his followers. Now he was one of the group’s leaders. That was why Herod wanted him.

It was the week of the spring festival when Jewish families remember how God brought their people out of slavery in Egypt. Herod meant to wait until it was over and then bring Peter out in front of the crowds. Everyone knew what that meant. They had just seen what happened to James.

So Peter was locked up and handed to four squads of soldiers, four men to a squad. Sixteen soldiers for one fisherman. Across the city, his friends were praying for him, hard.

Then came the last night.

On the night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, with sentries standing guard at the entrance to the prison.

Stay in that cell a minute.

James was dead. Peter was chained to a soldier on each side, with more at the door. The trial was in the morning. He had no plan, no lawyer, no friend on the inside, no way to get word out. There wasn’t one piece of it he could handle.

And he slept.

An angel came, and a light shone in the cell. The angel had to tap Peter on the side to wake him. Get up quickly.

The chains fell off his wrists. Then the angel told him what to do, one thing at a time. Get dressed. Put on your sandals. Wrap your cloak around you. Follow me. Peter did each thing, sure he was only seeing a vision. They passed the first guard and the second. The iron gate to the city opened by itself. They walked one block down the street, and the angel was gone.

Peter stood alone in the dark street, and it finally landed. It was real. He was out.

He couldn’t believe it at first either, so a stranger reading it for the first time is in good company.

He went to the house where his friends were praying and knocked at the outer gate. A servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. Another girl at another door. This time she knew his voice, and she was so overjoyed that she forgot to open the gate, but ran inside and announced, “Peter is standing at the gate!”

The people who had been praying all night for exactly this told her she was crazy. You are out of your mind. She kept insisting. They decided it must be his angel.

But Peter kept on knocking.

The man who had just walked out past sixteen soldiers was stuck outside his friends’ front gate, knocking, while they argued about whether it could possibly be him.

When they finally opened it, they were astounded. He waved them quiet, told them how the Lord had brought him out, and left for somewhere safer. He was still a wanted man. At daybreak the soldiers were in an uproar, and Herod had the guards put to death. The story doesn’t hide that. Real mornings come after nights like this one.

This isn’t a promise that the gate always opens. Same king, same city, same chapter, and James didn’t walk out. Most people’s worst nights don’t end with chains falling off.

But look at the order. Peter slept before the light came, not after. He didn’t rest because he knew he’d be rescued. He had no idea. He rested in the chains, with the trial still set for morning, while a house full of people across the city stayed awake for him. He didn’t have to keep watch. Somebody else was keeping it.