Do You Know of Whom You Sing?
By Michael
K. Farrar, O.D.
© December
17, 2003
Mary awoke
to the soft music of Christmas songs emanating from her alarm clock. She sat up
in bed and managed to crack an eye open. She had slept well. That eggnog before
going to bed had really topped her evening. Her other eye peeked open. She slid
out of bed and decided to take a shower. She began to sing, “Joy to the World”
as she turned on the shower and waited for the water to get warm. The words of
the song came easily to her. Christmas songs were a significant part of her
celebration during the season. She began singing the second verse as she
stepped into the nice hot shower. Steam gathered in the bathroom as the warm
mist of the shower created a cozy white fog. Condensation gathered on the
bathroom mirror as droplets of water formed and ran down in a peculiar pattern.
Mary finished the third verse of
her song as she turned off the shower and searched for the soft towel on the
shelf near the shower door. Beginning verse four she wrapped the towel around
her and gazed into the mirror covered with water droplets. She almost wiped her
hand across it so she could see better, but something stopped her. She noticed
that some of the small droplets of water had coalesced to form bigger ones that
had trickled down the face of the mirror. She stopped singing and attempted to
interpret the images that had formed on the mirror. They almost seemed to be
letters, or were they words? She studied the mirror for several minutes and
then determined that it almost seemed like the words said, “Do you know me?”
Strange, she thought. What a quirk
of nature to perceive words in a steamed‑up mirror. The images disappeared as
she wiped her hand across the smooth shiny surface. She brushed her teeth,
applied makeup and dressed. She hummed “Silent Night” as she munched her cereal
and the words of the third verse came from her lips as she put on her coat and
left for work. The windows of the car were covered with ice. She scrapped off a
small part of the thin layer of ice on the driver's side of the front window,
got in and started the car. Down the road to work she went, peering through the
small opening of ice she had created on the windshield. She felt the warmth of
the heater kicking in as she finished the last verse of “Silent Night.” She
began singing “O Holy Night,” one of her favorites, as the ice on the
windshield began to melt in a curious pattern.
Mary turned on her windshield
wipers to remove the melting ice just as she noticed the images of letters in
the droplets of water and ice on the windshield. The wipers quickly removed the
evidence. Had she really seen what she thought she had seen? She stopped
singing as she contemplated the shapes of what had appeared to be letters
formed on the windshield. Had they really formed the words, “Do you know me?” I
must be going crazy she thought.
Mary picked up “O Holy Night”
where she had left off and managed to finish the song as she pulled into her
parking place at work, the local newspaper. She entered the office building and
proceeded to take her place at her workstation. She turned on her computer,
loaded her word processor and began typing the article due that day. She hummed
“O Come, O Come Emmanuel” as she worked on the article. Occasionally she would
verbalize the words aloud when she reached a contemplative part of the creative
process. A couple of minutes passed and then her computer screen began blinking
off and on. Concerned that she would lose the work she had done so far, she
attempted to click on the save option. The blinking screen made it difficult to
accomplish such a task. Then her worst fears were realized when the program
crashed leaving a frozen image of scattered words and garbage characters on the
screen. Frustrated she slumped in her chair wondering what to do next. She
gazed at the screen and noticed something interesting about some of the words
on the screen. Most of them were just randomly placed words, but down in the
lower right corner were four words together forming a sentence,
“Do you know me?”
Chills ran down her
spine. Was this a joke?
Mary began to hum “What Child Is
This.” Then she stopped and thought. She had been singing Christmas carols all
day long and had seen these images of the question, “Do you know me?” first in
the bathroom, then on her car windshield and now on her computer. Was God
trying to tell her something? She thought she knew God. She went to church
every Christmas and Easter. They were her favorite times to go to church.
Wasn't that enough to know who God was? Maybe it wasn’t?
She thought about the Christmas
carols she had sung that day. The words to “O Holy Night” came to mind, “O holy
night, the stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior's
birth.” She thought about the words, “our dear Savior's birth.” She had never
really contemplated what the title “Savior” might mean to her. What did she
need saving from? Then the words of the next sentence of the song wrote
themselves across her thoughts, “Long lay the world, in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the soul felt it's worth.”
How dumb could she have been? She
felt a tug on her heart as she repeated the words under her breath, “in sin and
error pining.” She realized that she had never really been content with her
life. She had always felt that something was missing. That was her problem. She
was sinful and needed a Savior. All this time, every year, she had sung these
songs and had never really thought about what they meant. A tear rolled down
her soft cheek. She needed a Savior.
Quietly and quickly, she prayed a
short prayer and asked Jesus to come into her heart. She felt relieved and full
of hope as the next few words of “O
Holy Night” entered her thoughts, “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.” At that instant, her computer
screen went black and her computer began rebooting, the word processor reloaded
and prompt on the screen asked if she wished to load the last file she had
worked on. She clicked “Okay” and up came the complete file she had thought she
had lost. She proceeded to finish her article as she sang the refrain from “O
Holy Night.” “Christ is the Lord, Oh praise His name forever. His power and
glory evermore proclaim.” It truly was a new and glorious morning she thought.
John 3:16‑18
“For God so loved the world that
he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but
have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the
world, but to save the world through him.”