How Can We Sleep While Our Beds Are Burning?

How are Climate Activists feeling these days? Do you remember the climate as a political issue? Everyone seems to have stopped talking about the fate of our poor old planet for a year or so, and I think maybe Climate Activists are not OK…

Here’s a headline from iPolitics that was published on July 2, 2025: ‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost.

That is a jarring headline, all the more so if you fondly remember David Suzuki from his days as host of the documentary series The Nature of Things that the CBC ran from 1960 to 1979. Back then he was more of a friendly, smiley, nerdy, science guy. He’s long since turned his smile upside down into a scolding frown, and exchanged his helpful tips to be more environmentally conscious for dark profanity-laced prophecies of impending doom. In fact, I should probably have put a language warning on that link, Suzuki has developed a penchant for punctuating his alarmisms with F-bombs for impact.

But I don’t fault him for his increased anxiety. How else could anyone expect him to react to his deeply held belief that the world is about to end? He is not the one responding illogically, it’s the rest of the world that has spent the last decade or more pushing for Earth saving initiatives only to abandon them without having even made a dent in the goals they set out to accomplish, they’re the ones who are altogether too aloof about the whole climate situation. Why are they not joining in with earnest Australian eco-rock band Midnight Oil’s 1987 desperate cri de cœur, how can we sleep while our beds are burning?

It’s a fair question, sleep and anxiety don’t mix. Sleep is elusive. I was reflecting on that as I was meditating on Psalm 3, and marveling at King David’s ability to sleep while assailed by his son’s army. David starts in verse 1 by lamenting “O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me;” and by verse 5 he says “I lay down and slept.”

As someone who now considers anyone’s claim of having enjoyed a good night’s sleep an intolerable brag, I found this Psalm remarkable.

How?! David’s on the run, in the wilderness, enemies surround him, trying to kill him, he finds some clump of moss to lay his head on and lights out… he gets his beauty sleep? Come on! There is only one way for this to happen, it has to be a literal miracle. I mean that God has to intervene and grant him this rest. David sleeps because although his circumstances would be anxiety-inducing to the most level-headed person in the world, he knows God is in control and so there is no reason to be anxious at all.

Sure, his own son has raised an army to overthrow and likely assassinate him, sure he is surrounded and assailed, sure this is all because of his own doing, he has created a mess he cannot possibly see a way out of. But… as David declares in verse 3, “the Lord is my shield.” End of story, good night, sleep tight.

As the literary great Victor Hugo wrote to Savinien Lapointe in 1841: “Take heart and be patient, sir. Heart for the great pains of life, and patience for the lesser ones. Then, when you have laboriously accomplished your daily work, go to sleep in all serenity. God is awake.”

We too can take comfort in God’s sovereignty when we are assailed by anxiety, and like David say to ourselves: Look, I know, I can’t get myself out of this mess, in fact I know I brought this on myself, so in all likelihood I would just make it worse, I know I don’t see a way, but I’m not the one in control, God is!

When you are lying there in the dark with your eyes wide open and sleep is completely beyond your grasp, and the enemy is whispering in your ear that it’s all your fault, that you made the mess and that you cannot fix it, and that no one can help you and th