He Sees You When You're Sleeping

No, I'm not talking about Santa Claus. I'm talking about God. Isn't it interesting, though, how we can use our imaginations (a gift from God, by the way) to justify all the remarkable things that Santa can do --- get down tight-fitting, smoke-filled chimneys; eat enough milk and cookies that would choke a horse; fly around in the sky without falling out of the sled; deliver presents to a gazillion kids in just one night; and remember in detail the wish lists AND the naughty-and-nice lists. Even Hollywood computer geeks can dazzle us with video wizardry that makes the above mentioned feats (and more) seem visually believable.

I guess that's why so many people have trouble believing that a Supreme Being can oversee and interact with all creation 24/7. I can't tell you how many times I have been asked by skeptics, "How could God possibly be everywhere at the same time, answer (or at least listen to) every prayer and change the course of history to exert his will?" I don't know why. I don't have an answer. But I don't feel the need to figure it out before I'll believe that he IS. I can only say that for myself I am constantly aware of his presence, encouraging me, challenging me --- even admonishing me. And as I obey, doing the good that he tells me to do, I find that the things he doesn't want for me are easier to resist.

Jesus said in Matthew 10:29 that even a sparrow cannot fall to the ground apart from the will of God. Another one of those things I can't explain, but I see his hand at work in EVERYTHING in our lives. All things that happen to us have a purpose. Pain, sorrow, laughter, anger, riches, poverty, disaster --- the list is endless. The problem is that we demand to know the purpose so that we can make sense of it. I suspect that someday we will know all of the purposes, but not today, maybe not even in this lifetime.

Another sad reflection in my, at least, partially failed parenting, was that whenever my children would weary me with constant questions, I would more often than not resort to a pat answer, "Because the sky is blue." Funny, I don't remember any of them actually asking WHY the sky was blue.

God doesn't give me pat answers to my questions. He asks me to wait, and just trust him, and obey. I find that whenever this becomes a pattern in my life, he tends to give me answers to the questions that I didn't ask. And while I can't often remember what was in my dreams, I have this gut feeling that he's been feeding me information while I was sleeping. He's like that, you know.
STEVE