He Knows When You’re Awake

We never had extra cash when I was a child, but my mother made every holiday very special. Even minor holidays like Saint Patrick’s Day and Veteran’s Day saw some preparation in our house, but Christmastime was the main slice of the year.

Sometime after Thanksgiving, on a weekday when my sister and I were at school, Mother would decorate the house. She would string garland from corner to corner in the living room near the ceiling, and drape icicles on it. She would cover our battered coffee table with gift wrap and place upon it a thorned limb on which she would stick gum drops. Also on the coffee table went a plastic Santa in a cart, pulled by Rudolph (Santa had originally cradled a bundle of suckers in the crook of his arm) and a tiny plastic Nativity scene. A ceramic Christmas tree in the front window, and a plastic bas relief Santa on the front door completed the preparations. All that remained was the trip to the corner lot to get an economical tree nailed to a scrap wood X. When we arrived home on Yule Decoration Day, our little house had been transformed.

We were, I believe, among the last to see a Christmas parade in our hometown. I can recall standing in my little coat and hat in the freezing night (the Christmas parade was always at night, and like a carnival, the colors were more dramatic and festive), watching an elephant lumber past us on Main Street and knowing that in the molasses mugginess of summer, I would marvel at the sticky asphalt of the street and remember the elephant and his droppings steaming in the frigid Yule night.

My sister and I believed the Santa story (for me, much longer than I should have, but that’s another story). The idea of the omni-Santa watching over us was a mysterious, compelling one. Between childhood and middle age, I replaced Santa with the sovereign God who knows, sees, and controls all, but not without difficulty. And again, that’s another story.

This omnipresent sovereignty was on my mind yesterday as I prepared to fill my bird feeders outside. The weather being merciless, the little creatures had stripped all the feeders bare during the course of the day. I went to the barn and discovered that my seed supply was lower than I’d thought. Doing a bit of head math, I decided that I could fill each feeder about half full and have enough to put some in all of them. While preparing to lift the large sack and pour the contents into the pitcher I use for this chore, I accidentally kicked over the pitcher and spilled much of the seed it contained all over the wiry wintergrass, where it was lost.

I stood there with a lead weight in my chest, looking up and whispering “Why?”

This is one of those situations I will likely never understand. Why would God allow me to lose seed when I don’t have much of it to begin with? I mean, I wasn’t trying to do something bad. I was trying to feed and help some of His little creatures, the ones He supposedly monitors when they tumble out of a tree. Why would He thwart me when I’m about such business?

And I thought back to my teen years, and an occasion when I was about to do something illegal, if not immoral. I was torn by the moral quandary, caught between the desire to have fun with friends and the yearning to be a good boy and do the right thing. I remember praying silently and in deadly earnest, “Lord, help me not go to this party. Put some roadblock in my way and prevent me, because I’m not strong enough to say ‘no’ on my own.”

But no roadblock fell from the sky. Nothing prevented me. And I went to the party and did what unsupervised  teenagers in 1977 did. And yes, the deed involved listening to the music of Pink Floyd, the consumption of pizza and Doritos, and lots of harsh coughing.

So I knelt in my yard, raking through the cold grass with numb fingers, trying to salvage some seed for my little friends, and trying to figure out why God would hinder me in an act of mercy but allow me to proceed unimpeded in things that certainly must have displeased Him.

These questions have not abated with age. They have in fact increased in frequency and intensity.

On Christmas Eve, many will look up at the stars and think of a long-ago night in Bethlehem. I will look up and ask my questions, and the hours will pass me by like an elephant in a parade, but will there be answers?

Will I continue to ask the questions forever, or will I grow out of them, like I did my belief in Santa Claus?

How far am I from dislodging the belief that He, even He, really does see me when I’m sleeping and really does know when I’m awake?

~ S.K. Orr