The Bible says God never sleeps. (And he never slumbers, either!) He’s always alert and watching over everyone, which is why nothing ever harms his people. So why are people always having to wake him up?

David had to tell God to wake up and help him. The sons of Korah also had to tell him to wake up, because he was sleeping and ignoring their trouble. Isaiah had to tell God to wake up, because he had been sleeping and neglecting everyone for so long, people thought of divine help as a thing of the past.

And then there’s Jesus. The Bible claims that Jesus is God, who supposedly never sleeps, but Jesus seems to need to sleep just as much as any other human. He slept through a storm that almost drowned him and his disciples, until they woke him up.

Jesus also portrays himself/God as prone to sleep in his parables. In one story, God is a farmer who doesn’t think he needs to pay attention to the grain he’s growing. He doesn’t really understand the process, so he just lets it grow by itself while he sleeps. Another farming allegory explains that the reason there are evil people in the world is that Satan came and put them there while Jesus was sleeping.