I am a guy who runs perpetually on too little sleep - and more than once it has almost led to my demise. More than just a few of these blog pieces were written under the influence of too little sleep - thus the rambling nature of most of them.
Once, I was in a situation where sleepiness was brought on by too little oxygen - a nice little state of drowsiness called hypoxia (hypo oxia). I was working in Flight Test Engineer and, as part of a test, we had commanded an (cabin pressurization) outflow valve open by opening a breaker and then inadvertently left it open, thinking it was closed. As we were climbing up to 37,000 feet, I began to feel very light headed and then my thought processes began to slow and a nice feeling of well-being came over me at around 14,000 feet. If someone had given me some terrible news, I would have been just fine with it - I didn't have a care in the world.
At that point, I was just behind the flight deck and heard the warning sirens going off and the masks suddenly dropped. I had enough presence of mind to then grab the mask and activate for a nice whiff of oxygen which then quickly revived me and my full cognition returned and my mind comprehended the slow state of death I was entering into that could have taken my life had I not acted.
So it is in this life. We must never get too distracted or complacent and lose awareness of the danger around us and the fragility of our situation so that we are too slow to react before it is too late. When the warning bells begin to go off and the Spirit is warning us to our imminent demise, we must spring into action and put our full effort into maintaining focus and acting according to the commands we are given. When I tell people they should be ready - and watching and waiting, people perk up and then slowly descend back into that dreamy spiritually hypoxic state where it is so comfortable and there are no cares. Truly it was that very condition that Isaiah warned about in the Book of Mormon:
2 Nephi 1:13 O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.
2 Nephi 27:5 For behold, the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep. For behold, ye have closed your eyes, and ye have rejected the prophets; and your rulers, and the seers hath he covered because of your iniquity.
In talking about that condition, a friend of mine last night mentioned that one of her relations perked up when told about what may be coming, asked for the expected date, and promptly fell right back into metaphorical sleep. Its like, C'MON!!! Makes you want to shake people. Is it just me? Or is anyone else as frustrated with people??
I guess we are just creatures of habit. We will wait until there is no more time, maybe see which team is winning and then go root for that team. Fence sitters most of us - and we all know what happened to that lot in the high-stakes game in the pre-existence.
So lastly, I want to draw attention to the quote on the right side of the blog near the top. It is God's expectation that we be watching and waiting with our lamps trimmed and ready to go.
WHY SHOULD WE STUDY THE HIDDEN THINGS RELATED TO THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST?
But the Latter-day Saints are not in darkness; they are the children of light, although many of us will actually be asleep. We shall have to wake up and trim up our lamps, or we shall not be prepared to enter in; for we shall all slumber and sleep in that day, and some will have gone to sleep from which they will not awake until they awake up in darkness without any oil in their lamps. But, as a general thing, the Saints will understand the signs of the times. Others have their eyes closed upon the prophecies of the ancient Prophets; and not only that, but they are void of the spirit of prophecy themselves. When a man has this, though he may appeal to ancient Prophets to get understanding on some subjects he does not clearly understand, yet, as he has the spirit of prophecy in himself, he will not be in darkness; he will have a knowledge of the signs of the times; he will have a knowledge of the house of Israel, and of Zion, of the ten tribes and of many things and purposes and events that are to take place on the earth; and he will see coming events, and can say such an event will take place, and after that another, and then another; and after that the trumpet shall sound, and after that certain things will take place, and then another trump shall sound, &c., &c.; and he will have his eye fixed on the signs of the times, and that day will not overtake him unawares.
JD, O PRATT 7:190
God does not look favorably on the last-minute lookie-lous that want to just jump in at the last minute knowing they were going to get a free ride.
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