For some reason, I spent a lot of time today thinking about what Christmas means, and trying to figure out why I still haven’t really got the Christmas spirit yet. I mean, here I was just hours away from Christmas morning and it just didn’t feel like Christmas this year. Maybe it was because I didn’t go crazy decorating the outside of the house this year. Although, I didn’t decorate the outside because I just didn’t feel very “Christmasy” this year. Not sure why.
So I was helping clean the house today and I was thinking about religion, and how some people have faith and others need to actually see some proof. I fall in the middle. Those that know me best know I am not an outwardly religious person. Those same people might also be surprised to learn that I do my own praying just about every day. Some days I pray a lot. I pray when a friend is hurt. I pray when a friend is having a troubled pregnancy. I pray when a friend is having trouble getting pregnant. I pray for someone when they are sick or have died. See a pattern? I pray for others. I generally do not pray for myself because I have always felt I didn’t need it. I am fortunate. I have worked hard to get where I am, believe me, but there are others that are not as fortunate, so I pray for them.
I have pretty much everything I want except for that one last thing – blind faith. I know people that have it and I have always felt that it was the one thing that I was really missing out on. I think analytically. I work with computers constantly and I know that nothing is every truly random. I like to see proof. Evidence if you will. So I watch for things. Some things that others call signs, I usually call coincidences. But I keep watching. Hoping. I guess I keep looking for the big miracle instead of the little things. I watch a father of 2 get Cancer and die out of nowhere. I watch a little girl get trapped under her garage door and she barely survives, but she may never be able to lead an unassisted life. I watch as people, in the name of religion, kill and kill and kill in the Middle East. All in the name of religion. But I never see the miracle. I never get to see the good.
I want to believe. I want to have that blind faith. I do believe that there is something or someone out there. I do believe that it is God that is out there. I talk with him all the time. I thank him often. I just wish I had more proof that I could see. So while I was cleaning I kept in thinking about faith and how it was missing in me. I never got any answers, just more questions.
Earlier in the week my wife’s friend Karen had dropped off a nut roll for the holidays. I promised I wouldn’t touch it since my wife was going to have it at our yearly Christmas Eve party. I was finishing cleaning when my wife opened the nut roll to put it out for company. I had not discussed any of my faith thoughts with her at all, so I was surprised when I heard her say the word faith from the kitchen. That stopped me in my tracks. “What did you say?” I asked her. She said that Karen had poked the word faith in to the top of the nut roll with a fork. There it was right in front of me – faith. I was blown away. I had been thinking about that word all day long and here it was on top of our nut roll.
Maybe the proof you are looking for is not going to show up on a Billboard in the middle of Times Square. Maybe it will be in a message as subtle as a word poked in to the top of your nut roll.
Merry Christmas everyone!
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