DO YOU KNOW OF WHOM YOU SING?

By Michael K. Farrar, O.D.

© God’s Breath Publications

 

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, but her bed was so warm and cozy she didn’t want to get up. 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 peculiar caused her to pause. 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. Right before the wipers made their first pass across the windshield she noticed the images of letters in the droplets of water of the melted 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 its 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.”