Acts 12:1-6: in context

King Herod has begun a campaign against the church. He has already executed James, the brother of John, with the sword, and seeing that it pleased the crowds, he arrests Peter too, meaning to bring him out for public execution after the Passover. Peter is held under absurdly heavy security, four squads of four soldiers each, chained between two guards, with more sentries at the door. Humanly speaking, he is a dead man; the machinery of his execution is already in motion. And the church, we are told, is doing the one thing it can: constant, earnest prayer is being made to God for him. That is the setting, a man in chains on the eve of his execution, and a community on its knees.

And then comes a detail so small it is easy to miss, and so revealing it is worth stopping on. On the very night before Herod meant to bring him out and kill him, Peter was sleeping. Not pacing, not weeping, not lying awake in dread rehearsing his death, but asleep, so deeply asleep that when the angel comes to rescue him, he has to strike Peter on the side to wake him up. On the last night of what he had every reason to think was his life, Peter slept like a child. That is not the sleep of a man who has given up; it is the sleep of a man who has handed his life, and his death, entirely over to God, and can rest because the outcome is no longer his to carry.

That sleep exposes how little of that peace I usually have. I lie awake over threats a thousand times smaller than execution, turning over problems that have not happened yet, unable to rest because I am still gripping the outcome, still trying to control what I cannot. Peter, facing death, slept, because he had truly let go and left it with God. When I cannot sleep for the weight of what I am carrying, is it because I am still holding on to an outcome I was never meant to control, and what would it take to hand it over the way Peter had, and rest?