Recently my wife and I were sitting in the den watching television. Suddenly the TV went dark, the lights blinked and then shut off, and the electric smoke alarm in the hallway started beeping, indicating it was not in operation.
We had lost power to the house. We would later learn that a tree had fallen on power lines in the neighborhood and shut down several homes in our area.
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It was dusk and the last remnants of sunlight were quickly fading into the horizon. We sat there for several minutes, wondering if this would be just a momentary outage, but when it persisted we began to face the possibility of spending the night without electricity. The first thing I pondered was, “What still works?” Not much. My mobile phone had life, but I hadn’t charged it since morning and it wasn’t going to last much longer. And the internet was out anyway. I could make calls and send text messages, but that was it. I thought it wise not to use it, to conserve what little power was left in case of an emergency.
No light
No light for reading. No air-conditioning. No refrigeration. Clocks were stopped. We don’t own a generator. There wasn’t much to do except sit in the darkness, feeling a bit lost and insecure. We had no control. Our fate was in the hands of the power company.
My thoughts began to take a spiritual turn. This, I reckoned, must be sort of what it’s like not to have Jesus in your life. Non-believers must go through the motions of daily living, totally in the dark as to why they are here and what their purpose is. No power available beyond themselves to get through adversity and challenge. No control over the complete randomness of their circumstances.
It had to be, I concluded, far more frightening than the uncertainty of sitting in a dark den for a few hours.
By later that evening the power was restored. I was thankful for the workers who labored to fix the problem. And I was thankful for Jesus and His light always shining over us. God’s power is always available. You just have to be properly wired.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Ken Lass is a retired Birmingham television news and sports anchor and an award-winning columnist for numerous publications and websites.
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