3:00 a.m. Theology: What Was That Noise?
Summer 2025
This summer series will explore questions that we may wonder when we’re awake at 3:00 a.m., or, generally, in the middle of the night. Some of my reflections will come from my experiences as a chaplain working the night shift at a Level I Trauma Center. Other stories come from other times in my life. If you have questions that you wonder when you’re awake in the middle of the night, I invite you to leave a comment or message me to submit them, as I’d love to ponder more than just the ones I’ve thought of or been asked. Also, as a little fun, I’ll schedule these posts to publish at 3:00 a.m. EST.
This post is also known as: Things that Go Bump in the Night.
I’m curious, what are your criteria for getting up out of bed in the middle of the night to investigate a noise? Does it have to be loud? Does it have to involve someone else in your household? Which sounds do you ignore and roll back over on, and which ones make you more alert?
We have a fair number of trees in our yard, so the sound of a branch falling or a strong gust of wind may wake me up, but I won’t get out of bed for it. Same with loud car sounds. Noises from my kids will still get me out of bed, even as they’re now middle schoolers (thankfully, they usually sleep through the night). And if my dog starts to bark, and barks more than one warning bark, I will probably send my spouse to go see what has the dog riled up. The sound of the power going out will wake me up, but I know what it is, so I stay put. The only other noise I can think of that will propel me to leave my bed are emergency sirens and lights. The siren will wake me up, if it’s on my street; the lights flashing through the windows will pique my interest enough to get me up to see what’s going on. I can only name two instances when this has happened in my adult life, and the first one was a motorbike accident in which the driver died, right in front of my house. I was up with an infant for a 3AM feeding when the lights through the curtains caught my eye. That may be why I will still always check.
When I lived in Nicaragua, serving with a mission agency, I sent out a monthly newsletter. One time I shared a brief list of things that go bump in the night: mangos falling off the tree in the patio; cats when they tried to jump from corrugated roof to corrugated root and missed (or slipped) and landed in the patio, and me, when I came back from the internet cafe after everyone else had already gone to bed 😆
What noises make your brain more awake in the middle of the night, and which ones can you ignore and go back to sleep? A lot of what makes our brains more awake is when the noise is something that creates a little bit of fear in us: was that sound someone trying to break in? Was that sound someone trying to steal something? Did I close the garage door? Why is the dog barking so much at 3AM and what did he hear? (Our dog is old and slowly going blind and deaf, so if he’s barking, we’ve deduced that he’s probably actually responding to something he dreamt about.)
Random noises when it’s dark can make our brains immediately go into fear mode. We can have a heightened alert response as we listen for any unusual sounds or noises that could be threats. It’s a survival instinct. And, unless we can quickly identify the source of and reason for the sound, it can leave us wide awake at 3AM when we’d rather go back to sleep.
Unidentifiable noises that leave us wide awake tap into a primal fear. Anything that feels life or death elevates our alertness. Blood and adrenaline start pumping as we assess the potential threat. Yet while we can talk biology with things that go bump in the night, what about theology? Where is God when strange sounds occur in the dark? After all, God has a lot to say about fear, often to not be afraid and to put your trust in God. We don’t often pause for theological reflection at 3:00 a.m. when we’re startled awake. Yet just like during the daytime, we can pause to choose how we’re going to respond to a potential threat: taking deep breaths, thinking rationally about what a noise is likely to be, and decide whether we need to investigate to reassure ourselves, or we can just go back to sleep.
Leave me a comment with your criteria for what noises get you out of bed and which ones you can ignore. Or, for deeper thinking, where is God for you when things go bump in the night?