"This Little Light Of Mine..."

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day.  If you were fortunate, you had loved ones to be with. We were among those blessed to be with wonderful friends on Thursday for a great traditional Turkey dinner.  On Saturday it was so good to have our daughter in-law, Joanne  and the grandchildren, Mikayla and Nick with us.  A bonus blessing was having our step-grandson, Chrys and his sweet wife, Julie here too from California.  The weather was cooperative and we could go for a swim after lunch.

We are having some cooler weather today and for a few days to follow the weatherman tells us.  Last night we were in the dark for 3 hours after a rain storm, although not a bad storm, something went wrong somewhere around 7:15 PM , plunging us all into darkness.  Looking out the window we could see that we were not the only house without power.  All our neighbors up the street were also in the dark.  The only light around was from some small solar lights folks use in their yards.  Den lit us up with his trusty little pocket flashlight until I could round up and light three candles.  Now what a cozy atmosphere these wavering little flickers of brightness made in this very dark night! A really peaceful quietness surrounded us.  No mechanical, electrical or technology related noises!  Even the refrigerator was silent.  Now if we were in Vermont we would make some popcorn on the old wood stove in our kitchen but here we would have to go out on the patio and fire up the grill to do that as we don't even have a gas stove here!

I thought about  the folks who lived before electricity and even before the use of kerosene lamps became a source of light.  How really dim it is on a dark night with only the candle glow!  A big fire in a fireplace would give off a lot of light but on a really warm night would not be so good. I guess there would have been spinning to do but most sewing needs good light.  How long their winter nights must have been!  But I'll bet there were lots of good story tellers in those days!

We had blown out all our candles except one and gone off to bed by the time the problem was fixed and the lights came on again.  It is pretty scary just how dependent on electricity and its gadgets we are.  If we are prepared for being without the electric, we don't seem so  deprived.  Like our summer visits to Darling Hill in our little camper where there is no electric. Something else to be thankful for in this season of pondering all the many things we sometimes take so for granted.

As we prepare for Christmas, the season to celebrate the greatest gift mankind will ever receive, the birth of our Lord Jesus, the Light of the World, let us be most thankful !