Angels Tuck You In You hold an image, it provides a common thread No sense of menace, no feeling of dread You never worry your pretty little head and Angels tuck you in tonight Angels tuck you in tonight Angels tuck you in and greet you in the morning light This cartoon world you've created, it's like Disneyland Get out your golden ticket The one they give you when you're born again A guardian personage is watching over you Nothing uncomfortable can ever get through There is no suffering for the chosen few... You've been a wide-eyed innocent Come to the garden, come to the hill Come to the tree, come to the kill Won't break your bones, but it can break your will You're too afraid of hurting Been playing cover-up Expose yourself to dying And in this real world, it is your calling You hold an image, it provides a common thread No sense of menace, no feeling of dread You never worry your pretty little head and Angels tuck you in tonight Angels tuck you in tonight Angels tuck you in and greet you in the morning light 1983 Words and Music Terry Scott Taylor I complain about people who quote song lyrics as an answer to everything, but in this case I think this particular song fits right in.  If you're sarcasm impaired you might not have gotten the meaning... but if you're sarcasm impaired you probably shouldn't be here anyway.  Here's a hint, pay close attention to the second to the last verse. It's amazing how many people think that faith is some kind of magic talisman that if you hold in your hand nothing bad will ever happen to you and you can get anything you want.  That's not faith, and it is most definitely not adult faith. When I was a child, I committed my share of sin (and I still do).  But I figured it was okay because all I had to do was pray and ask God to forgive me and everything would be fine -- it was even okay for me to do the same bad thing over and over again even though I knew it was bad because God would forgive me later.  Whenever something bad happened to me I prayed that God would make it go away and consoled myself in the fact that God would never let anything bad happen to me. That all changed several years later.  I can't put my finger on the exact moment when I fell into adult faith, but I think I was about eighteen or nineteen.  The glimmers of adult fait were there... and finally sprung into full bloom in the winter of my 21st year. It was around Christmastime and I was dirt poor.  I had no money, no close family, and I was living with a man who had said six months previously that he loved me and wanted to marry me... but now was starting to act more and more like he wanted out of the relationship.  My only hope for anything beyond a miserable Christmas was a lottery my workplace was having.  There were tons of prizes and I had been lucky in the lottery once  before... I prayed fervently when I spent every last dollar of my lunch money for the rest of the week on some lottery tickets.  God wouldn't let me have a bad Christmas... he'd take care of me.  All I needed to do was pray really hard and he'd let me win the lottery and I'd have money for a nice Christmas dinner and some presents... ... I didn't win. At first I felt guilty, then I felt stupid.  Not only was I going to have a sucky Christmas... but now I  was going to be sucking ketchup packets for lunch for the rest of the week.  It was about then that a little voice in my head said: "What did you expect?  Who did you think you were praying to, Santa Claus?  God isn't some fluffy guy who gives you presents whenever you ask.  Whose fault is it that you're broke?  Whose fault is it that you're 1000 miles away from your family after some guy that you barely knew?  God didn't put you into this mess, YOU did... if you were him, would you help out someone like you who should have known better?  God gives you what you NEED, Gen... and right now you need a good dose of reality." I wandered around outside the building where I worked during lunch, not feeling particularly hungry and trying to think about what I could do.  My mind kept wandering back to my previous thoughts.  God isn't Santa.  He loves you and wants you to be happy... but there's one thing he can't protect you from, yourself. That hour was probably the fastest burst of spiritual growth I've had in my life.  In it I started thinking about what I need to be doing and what God had been slowly nudging me into doing.  I needed to be better with my money, and I needed to either end my relationship or patch it up.  Mostly though, I needed to stop expecting God to bail me out every time.  I needed to grow up. I was still feeling down when I returned to the  office, it was still Christmas, I was still broke, and I still had an awful Christmas to look forward to.  My selfishness had given way to a ray of hope... but that ray was still something I was going to have to work and suffer for, it wouldn't be handed to me and I had nothing joyful to look forward to in the immediate future. ... then I reached my desk.  Apparently the people in the office had taken up a collection for me.  There on my desk was a bag that had several sets of new clothes, new shoes, and a gift certificate for the grocery store.  I cried out of joy, and nobody there would admit to the gift. Another voice spoke to me: "God loves you, Gen.  He wants you to be happy.  But you have to take the happiness as he gives it to you, and you have to work and suffer sometimes.  Just because God lets you stumble doesn't mean he loves you any less.  Just because he doesn't give you every little treat you ask for  doesn't mean he's abandoned you.  Just because he lets you walk into sin doesn't mean he wont help you out of it.  But it wont help you if you don't REALIZE those mistakes... you're a big girl now, Gen.  You should know." And I did.  I also had a wonderful Christmas. But back to my point... This lesson taught me a lot about what faith really is.  Faith in itself is just a word.  People use it so much that they forget the point of it and  they forget what it means.  Faith is not magic, it's not a free ticket, and it's not a gift certificate.  Faith is trust. Faith is trusting that whatever happens to you is God's will.  That includes not reaching your dreams, that includes suffering, that includes never belonging or feeling abandoned, it includes not getting what you want.  Faith is trusting that God loves you through all of your pain. Once you realize this, you can start looking for the lessons to  be learned.  I learned my lesson at Christmastime about three years ago. There will be happy times as well, but we cant let the joy cloud up the meaning. True faith is praising God for the happy times, and trusting him through the bad times.  As creatures of sin we don't deserve anything.  We don't deserve this world, we don't deserve the air we breathe or the light that shines on us.  We don't deserve love or friendship -- but we get it anyway.  Isn't that an amazing gift in itself?  I don't see sometimes how people could constantly ask God to make them millionaires or movie stars or whatever when he's given them so much already. Then next time you ask God for something, ask yourself this first... is it something you selfishly want, or is it something you truly need?  If you don't get it, whose fault is it?  Yours for expecting something to fall in your lap without working for it... or God's?  Just think about it.  And remember, God gives you what you need, always. -Genesis Whitmore 02-99 Click here to go back