Dark Providence

Did I say dark providence? I mean DARK providence. I previously mentioned an "ice storm" that was very pretty, but not very menacing. Well, late Saturday night we had another ice storm... this time it was also pretty, but VERY menacing.

It was about 5am on Lord's Day morning when the explosion lit up our bedroom and woke us up with a BOOM...CRACK... fitz...fizz...crackle...ffffttt. The transformer across the street blew up, and our power was gone. Darkness. Silence. Oh well, nothing you can do about it. Back to sleep. The power company will have it fixed by the time we wake up.

Problem... we were one of about 100,000 people in Pennsylvania that lost power from that storm, though we had no idea. It was Lord's Day, and we did our regular Lord's Day stuff, just with a kerosene heater and candles. By 5pm, it was quite dark, and we did Catechism and sang Psalms in the dark. We spotted a crew at the power line where the transformer blew, so I walked over to ask if we might get power back that night. "Umm... who knows? We have a lot of people with no power today, and this transformer only serves this small neighborhood." In other words, there were other priorities, and we had no guarantee that we would have power that night. So, we went to bed a little early, with hopes of having electricity the next day.

Monday... no power.

Tuesday... no power.

Wednesday... no power.

Each morning we woke up and immediately started the kerosene heater and the propane grill. We made coffee and scrambled eggs on the grill every morning. And we ate by candle light by night.

Then, Wednesday evening, the power came back on, and I'm told my wife did a joyful dance. I was at work, so I didn't get to see it. But we have our power back after about 4 days and 3 nights, and we are quite grateful for things we will certainly be more careful to give thanks for from now on.

In all of this I learned some things. Amongst those things --

1. Although my house was cold, I'm thankful our home was warm, with love.
2. Although my house was dark, I'm thankful for the light in our home, the light of the God's Word.
3. Although we had no power, we still had power, from above.

I understand there are still more than a thousand people in my county without power even today. If you are inclined to pray for them, I'm sure they have a little dance of joy awaiting them when their power is eventually restored too.