Dispelling the Darkness

Our town has been without power for a month, and all of a sudden, it came back on the last day of September...last night. It surprised us all because we had heard it would be November or later. (And maybe this is just a trial run for some cruel experiment, and it is still going to go off again soon – who knows).


Anyway, because we are blessed with solar panels, our life has pretty much been normal except for no hot water for baths. Heating water on the stove for the kids, limited kid-bathing, and letting out small screams when the cold water hits your back, just became the norm. No problem. Our solar was also a blessing for the people who live around us and work for us, because we are able to charge all their cell phones for them.


When I was in town two weeks ago, I was just making small talk with the “grocery store” worker about the power, and he said, “We have been in darkness for a month,” and the thought struck me. I wanted to say, “No, sir, you have been in darkness for a lot longer than that.”


As I’m sure you have heard before, when it is dark in Africa, it is REALLY dark. There are no street lights, no night lights, no televisions in house windows, no nothing. You can’t see the hand in front of your face. It is an eery feeling. It’s like you are floating in space with nothing around.


This must be the kind of darkness that those not in Jesus are surrounded with. It’s eery, unnerving, and frightening, whether they will admit it or not.


But because of the lack of light here at night, the people’s eyes here (not mine) have adjusted, and they can actually see pretty well at night (not me).


This is also like the person who lives spiritually in darkness. For example, while living in Mississippi, Doug and I had a conversation with a student who had just accepted Christ. He said that before Christ, he thought he understood peace and he thought that his life was “good.” But after accepting Christ, he saw clearly that what he thought was peace and goodness was NOT. He said, “I just THOUGHT I was happy. I didn't know how different my life would be with Christ.”


People in “darkness,” have adjusted to the lack of light in their life and learned to live with it. They don’t even realize they are squinting and straining to see the beauty around them. To them, it’s natural. They just don’t know the difference.


Pray for the darkness to be dispelled in all the places of the world where they need the true light of God’s SON.