God Knows Best

Let this sink in.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who, before you began speaking, already knew and understood the whole matter? And rather than using this information to make you feel small or foolish instead opened up a way for you to obtain whatever it was you needed or longed for?

It could have been some gift you wanted for Christmas as a child, and as it turned out, the thing was already wrapped and under the tree. The one you were speaking to already knew from observing you and from other sources what it was and moved to make it happen.

In a sense that’s the story of God and Bob Cratchit. (Scrooge was just an intermediary).

At the beginning of the story, poor Bob Cratchit longs for just a little more warmth, the warmth of just one more lump of coal, but he knows if he attempts to take one from Scrooge’s bin he will be fired. Cratchit needs the job. He has a family depending on him for their survival and so he warms himself as best he can from the single candle on his desk.

Scrooge knows Cratchit’s situation because he is the one who employs him. So as Scrooge watches Cratchit’s behavior it puzzles him how the man can be both destitute and cheerful on this dark and bitter cold night before Christmas.

Fast forward to the end of the story and we see Scrooge moving quickly to make things right with Bob, which results in improving the life and health of his crippled son Tiny Tim.

You might say that old Ebenezer has taken the final verse of Psalm 1 to heart.

for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Psalm 1:6

God, as represented by the three spirits, came to show Scrooge his own past, present, and possible future through different Christmases he has lived and might live as a wicked man. In contrast he also sees the life of a righteous man (Bob Cratchit) who may have been poor in material possessions but rich in a much more important way.

I think the story works because it reflects an important truth. We are completely known. in fact, we are known better than we know ourselves. Our lives have been watched all along and even in difficult times, God has never taken his eyes off of us. But it’s more than just the idea we are being coldly observed. It is that God is bending the universe to work in our favor. I know it doesn’t seem this way at times but our stories are not finished. There are more awesome chapters ahead.