MOST OF US GET A FULL EIGHT HOURS SLEEP EACH NIGHT to perform at peak the following day. Others get along quite nicely with as little as three to four hours. But it is universally agreed that a human being must eventually sleep, just as he must eat or drink. In fact, doctors are fond of saying that “sleep is the brain’s food”; starve the brain and you die.

So what are we to make of the strange case of Al Herpin? A 90-year-old handyman of average intelligence and excellent health? Herpin lived in a tarpaper shanty outside of Trenton, New Jersey, in the 1940’s. He claimed he had never slept! Legions of doctors marched to his door, determined to expose the fraud and thus buttress their own medical theories.

Inside Mr. Herpin’s house, they found a rocking chair and a table---but no bed, no hammock, no cot, nothing on which a man might lie down. For weeks on end, medics attended Herpin in relays, waiting for the man to sneak a few winks. He never did. Naturally, after a hard day’s work at odd jobs, he would be tired. But his way of resting was to sit in his rocker and read seven newspapers thoroughly until he felt refreshed.

Obviously this man’s condition was an anomaly. His brain was simply wired differently than most humans. Helpin himself contended that the cause of his lifelong insomnia was an injury his mother had suffered just a few days before delivering the infant Al. He finally closed his eyes for eternal sleep on January 3, 1947, at the age of 94.

In Psalm 121, we are told that the LORD watches over His children perpetually. He doesn’t slumber. Ever. He is always awake—24-7! How much better we can sleep, knowing that He is constantly watching over us. He is the rock of our salvation, our firm foundation, and our everlasting security.