It was a typical January morning in the arctic. We were busy with our normal morning routines. I had just put hot-rollers in my hair (I know, I'm stuck in the '90's). Then, just as I was opening my makeup drawer, the power went out. It was dark. This felt like one of the ten plagues dark. I couldn't see anything. My son hollered down, "It's the whole town, not just our street!" Thankfully this doesn't happen often here in Iceland.
I took the rollers out, fingered through the curls, and decided to head to the church early to fix my makeup. I used my handy pocket-sized self-defense flashlight to find my coat and keys. As I drove down my street, I noticed several things.
1. There is no dark like middle-of-the-winter arctic dark when the cloud cover blocks the moon and stars and the lights go out.
2. The gray building at the end of my street that I have mostly ignored for twenty years has battery operated emergency lights in one of its windows.
3. One of my neighbors has a flashlight.
4. I am very thankful for electric lights.
5. I really, really hate the dark.
6. Light and mirrors are essential to hair dressing and makeup.
We had been studying Proverbs 31 in our ladies' Bible study. This virtuous and industrious woman has a candle that does not go out by night. I had been pondering what that meant. I know that commentaries can give me cultural and historical meanings about that candle, but I had been thinking about what that meant to me. Does this woman stay up all night? I doubt it. Everybody has to sleep sometime, even this super woman in Proverbs 31. Why did her candle stay lit?
Suddenly, as I was driving down the very dark, dim, road, while half-expecting Poe's Raven to tap on my car door, it came to me. "Her candle goeth not out by night." She has a light in the window for the people in the dark. She doesn't hide her light or put it out at home. That light cries, "Welcome! There is shelter from the cold here! There is no need to be out in the dark, alone and afraid!"
One candle may not seem like much, but if everything is dark, that light means everything.
As I pulled into the church, where there was power, I noticed the cross that a friend of our ministry had made with the lights put around it by my husband. This is a candle in the window.
May I be a light in the dark.
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Patrick and Vicki Weimer in Iceland since 1999
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2 comments:
Just plain beautiful! Thank you.
Thanks, Lou Ann!
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