Our God is Ever Awake

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth 
thee will not slumber.  Behold, he that keepeth Israel 
shall neither slumber nor sleep.            Psalms 121:3-4

     A poor woman, as the Eastern story has it, came to the Sultan
one day, and asked compensation for the loss of some property.
     “How did you lose it?” said the monarch.
     “I fell asleep,” was the reply, “and a robber entered my dwelling.”
     “Why did you fall asleep?”
     “I fell asleep because I believed that you were awake.”
     The Sultan was so much delighted with the answer of the woman,
that he ordered her loss to be made up.  But what is true, only by a
legal fiction, of human governments, that they never sleep, is true in the
most absolute sense with reference to the divine government.  We can
sleep in safety because our God is ever awake.  We are safe because
he never slumbers.  Jacob had a beautiful picture of the ceaseless care
of Divine Providence on the night when he fled from his father's house. 
The lonely traveller slept on the ground, with the stones for his pillow,
and the sky for his canopy.  He had a wondrous vision of a ladder
stretching from earth to heaven, and on which angels were seen
ascending and descending.  And he heard Jehovah saying to him,
“Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither
thou goest.” 
                                                                     N. McMichael