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    Near in the Night: 100 Evening Meditations on God’s Peace and Rest
    Near in the Night: 100 Evening Meditations on God’s Peace and Rest
    Near in the Night: 100 Evening Meditations on God’s Peace and Rest
    Ebook450 pages2 hours

    Near in the Night: 100 Evening Meditations on God’s Peace and Rest

    By Emily Ley

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    About this ebook

    Why is it that when the lights go off our minds start racing? We stew over what we could have done differently that day. We think about details we're afraid we'll forget in the morning. And most of all, we worry. Small anxieties as well as huge fears come alive when we're exhausted and trying to sleep. This 100-day devotional will put your anxieties in their place and bring peace to your soul.

    In this unique evening devotional, bestselling author Emily Ley shares her own stories and struggles, invites you into contemplation, and brings you back to the unchanging comfort found in the Bible.

    Near in the Night includes practical ideas to make your evenings calmer along with pages for taking notes, making lists (so you can stop thinking about those to-dos!), and journaling your personal reflections. Each of the 100 devotions will help you:

    • Turn off your worries and regrets at night
    • Remember God's goodness in an uncertain world
    • Develop a grace-filled evening routine so you can sleep well and wake up refreshed for the day ahead

    This devotional is perfect for:

    • Anyone looking for uplifting biblical readings for those stress-filled evening hours
    • Fans of Emily and her Simplified brand
    • Christmas, New Year's, Mother's Day, birthdays, and graduation

    Pairing biblical wisdom with Emily’s simplicity expertise, Near in the Night reminds us that God is always faithful and ever near, even in the darkest of nights.

    Look for Emily’s companion 100-day morning devotional, Sure as the Sunrise.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateOct 17, 2023
    ISBN9781400231348
    Author

    Emily Ley

    Emily Ley is the founder of Simplified®, a brand of planners and organizational tools for busy women, and the creator of The Simplified Podcast. Emily has been featured in Forbes, Glamour, and Good Housekeeping. She has been recognized with numerous awards, including Best New Product at the National Stationery Show, as well as Small Business of the Year, Female Owned Business of the Year, and Entrepreneur of the Year by Studer Community Institute. Emily and her team collaborated with AT-A-GLANCE® to create gift and planning collections carried in Office Depot, Staples, Walmart, and Target. Emily is the author of national bestselling books Grace, Not Perfection: Embracing Simplicity, Celebrating Joy; A Simplified Life: Tactical Tools for Intentional Living; When Less Becomes More: Making Space for Slow, Simple, and Good; and Growing Boldly: Dare to Build a Life You Love. An author, entrepreneur, wife, and mother to three, Emily lives in Pensacola, Florida, with her husband, Bryan, and their son Brady and twins, Tyler and Caroline.

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      Book preview

      Near in the Night - Emily Ley

      Introduction

      Because I’m a busy person by nature, it’s taken me a long time to love the ritual of drawing the day to a close. I’d stay awake all night working on projects and reading good books if I could. In the evenings, I tend to be like a runner who, after crossing the finish line, needs an extra jog around the track to slow her mind and body. It’s tough to come to an abrupt stop after moving so fast all day.

      Implementing a flexible, peaceful evening routine tells my brain that it’s time to rest, quiet my mind, and give my body a chance to recuperate. But even when I’ve completed my nighttime ritual and I’m quietly lying in bed with the lights off, sometimes my mind still races. I worry. I make plans. I rethink things I said or did that day.

      My anxiety often gets the best of me when it’s time to slow down. Over the last few years, I’ve found it’s more important than ever to ground myself in the truths I know for sure. And when the day is done, rooting myself in God’s mercy and grace helps me lay down my fears and worries like nothing else.

      In mid-2017, after Brady and the twins (then six and two) were fast asleep, I lay down in my bed, twisted the covers into my fists, pulled them up to my face, and cried. The room was dark, and the only sound came from a few stray cars, out late, passing by. For some reason, I was always able to get through the day with a smile on my face (a genuine one, most of the time), with thoughts of the baby I desperately wanted tucked far into the back of my mind, behind my to-do list and nonstop schedule. But at night, when the world slowed down, when the lights dimmed and my tasks were done, there was nothing to hold back those big feelings. And so the what-ifs, the worst-case scenarios, the tears all flowed. The silence from the room we’d deemed the eventual nursery was deafening.

      Evenings can be like that sometimes, can’t they? The worries and fears we’re mostly able to ignore during the day tend to rise to the surface in the dark. That niggling medical concern. Financial worries. Aging parents. Relationship challenges. It’s hard to outrun those thoughts when the world gets quiet. That night, I knew I could either allow my broken heart to swallow me whole, or I could help my mind travel to a different place, one with a bit of rest and (hopefully) some healing I desperately needed. I found that I could ground myself in truth to get through another night.

      I switched on my bedside lamp, opened to a fresh page in my journal, and wrote these four sentences:

      God is for me.

      God has not forgotten me.

      He hears my prayers.

      He is near me at night.

      If you’ve ever experienced infertility yourself, you know what the next few months looked like: a roller coaster of emotions. But every night, when the pain began to bubble to the surface, I opened that journal to remind myself what I knew for sure:

      God is for me.

      God has not forgotten me.

      He hears my prayers.

      He is near me at night.

      These statements held true every night that followed—even during the happy but challenging ones. The sleepless nights with a beautiful newborn baby by my side. The nights when I’d fall into bed absolutely exhausted from the wonderful, yet nonstop work of mothering. The nights when I burned the midnight oil to tend to a growing business.

      Whether you find yourself in a season of darkness and grief, or you’re simply thirsty for God’s nearness to settle you as the day fades, it’s my prayer that this book meets you exactly where you are. There are so many places in the Bible where we read of God’s nearness. That, in and of itself, is a comfort to me. Because if He is near, He is protecting us. If He is near, He sees what’s going on. If He is near, He is listening to our hearts. What comfort.

      The L

      ORD

      is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

      PSALM 145:18

      The L

      ORD

      is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

      PSALM 34:18

      Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

      PHILIPPIANS 4:5–7

      That they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.

      ACTS 17:27

      I invite you to use this book as a foundational piece of your evening routine. Once the kids are tucked in bed, the house is picked up, and the work put away for the day, give yourself the gift of a few minutes of truth and reflection. Use this devotional as your last jog around the track, allowing your mind and heart to focus on God’s mercy and grace. At the end of this devotional, I share my ideal evening routine and invite you to think through your own. In addition to this book, you may want to add a Bible, a pretty notebook or journal, and your favorite pen to your bedside table.

      I pray you find peace and stillness in the promises that God is never far away, that He watches over you while you sleep, and that His goodness is true in the light and in the darkness, however long the darkness lasts. When the rest of the world seems uncertain and ever-changing, God is the Rock that cannot be moved and never disappears when the daylight fades to night.

      WEEK

      01

      DAY 1

      Rest for the Weary

      Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

      MATTHEW 11:28–30

      NIV

      Where do you turn when you get overwhelmed? When you’ve had a really busy day, meetings on top of meetings, calls on top of calls? When the school requests a parent-teacher conference? When the to-do lists just won’t end? There are lots of places the world tells us we can look for freedom. In the snack basket, in the wine glass, in the Netflix binge.

      I’ve tested all those options, and though they offer momentary relief from our day-to-day woes, they do nothing for the long term. Is there another option? A third door?

      Imagine yourself as a traveler. You’ve been walking all day. You’re tired, you’re hungry, you’re thirsty, and your backpack is so heavy. What do you do? You take off the pack. You set it down and stretch. You feed yourself and nourish your body. And you rest. You listen to your body and give it what it needs.

      You may not be on a cross-country trek, but you and the traveler are a lot alike. You’re both carrying a lot, which means you both need rest. So the next time you feel weary, set down your pack and listen to what your body really needs.

      DAY 2

      Bedtime Rituals

      So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

      1 CORINTHIANS 10:31

      Bedtime is a peculiar thing at our house. It is something I look forward to . . . and something I dread. I love the special tuck-in time with my children, saying prayers, snuggling with each one individually. But unfortunately, by this time of day, I am also existentially and unequivocally exhausted. I have been known to say a quick prayer around 7:00 p.m. for God to have mercy on my soul and give me patience to do bedtime well (and also to forgive me for wishing I could skip out on my kids’ bedtime ritual and just collapse into bed).

      Each child has a special way they like to be tucked in, and they have different things they want from Mom and Dad. With me, they want prayers, kisses, snuggles, time to verbally unpack their day, and back scratches. They also have certain phrases they like to say to me, and for me to say back to them (I will never not say, Goodnight, precious baby to Tyler because he says, Goodnight, precious mama back, and it is the best part of life). And when it comes to Dad, they like to be tossed into bed. That’s right—they want to be picked up and tossed into their beds. This elicits howls of laughter from each child and increases my anxiety tenfold because at this point, my children are so amped up. But alas, it is the Ley way of tucking kids into bed. And they fall asleep knowing they are loved and cared for.

      DAY 3

      Evening Routines

      To acquire wisdom is to love

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