“The couch of God’s sweet will”

“Let this analogy teach you what it means to rest in the Lord. Let your souls lie down upon the couch of His sweet will, as your bodies lie down in their beds at night. Relax every strain, and lay off every burden. Let yourself go in a perfect abandonment of ease and comfort, sure that, since He holds you up, you are perfectly safe. (Hannah Whitall Smith, The Christians Secret of a Happy Life, 42-43)
“The couch of His sweet will.” I’ve loved this image ever since I first read it. … Figuratively, “the couch of God’s sweet will” is a place where we trust the Lord enough to abandon self-effort and self-dependence…. Literally, it is a place where we are to “relax every strain, and lay off every burden.” For me such yielding begins as an actual, physical process. Early each morning, I sit on my sofa, look out the window into the first light, and deliberately “lay off” the cares of the next decades, the next year, the next month, the next week, and the upcoming hours. (Drawn from Driving into the Dawn, chapter 61. ©️ 2007)