A Christmas Memory: The Cuckoo Clock by Linda Greason
And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.
Romans 13:11-12
As a child, the cuckoo clock in our living room was more than just a timepiece—it was one of our family’s cherished possessions. Its familiar call marked every hour and half-hour, its sound echoing clearly throughout the rooms of our small bungalow. The presence of the clock was a constant, its voice a comforting rhythm in our daily lives.
On Christmas Eve, as anticipation filled the air, the cuckoo clock took on even greater significance. Every year, during the long night of December 24th to 25th, the clock never failed to wake my anxious, excited self. Yet, there was a frustration mixed with that excitement. When the clock sounded just once, my mind raced—is it 1:00 a.m., or could it be 4:30 a.m.? The uncertainty made each minute feel longer, because in our family, a sacred unwritten rule dictated that no one was to rise before 6:00 a.m. on Christmas morning.
Why didn’t I look at my bedside clock? Why didn’t I walk into the living room? One simple and profound answer solves those riddles and that is the 11th commandment known to children everywhere—the song lyric which clearly states “he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake” which meant disaster if I was found awake on that oh so important night! So, I stayed under the covers, waiting in anticipation for the next call of the cuckoo, listening intently to count its cries and finally learn the true hour.
In the lectionary passage for today, Paul admonished the Romans to awake and to live rightly as Jesus would have wanted them to do. He’s not referring to a specific time on the clock and as compared to my childish ritual of remaining awake—yet doing nothing—he challenged them to examine themselves and find a new direction. Self-reflection is not the easiest thing to do, let’s be honest, but in the doing of it we elicit ways we too can awake and live more fully into our Christian selves and Jesus’s expectations. Maybe the Christmas gift we will treasure the most this year is the challenge to go outside our personal comfort zone and awake to new means of service to others.