Perhaps during your earliest years you learned the same prayer I did before mealtimes. Remember these words? “God is Great. God is Good, and we thank Him for His food.” Last night when I crawled into bed, I offered this same prayer with a slight modification: “God is Great, God is sweet, and we thank Him for home heat.”
At about 5pm last evening, our house lights began to flicker and within moments, every 60 watt bulb burned at about 20 watts. Jim Gardner of ABC Action News went silent as our TV went black. But worse, the furnace that heats our home shut down. On the coldest night of the year thus far, wouldn’t you know it?
Since it was our prayer meeting night and scheduled just two miles away at Deb’s house, I phoned her to see if she had electricity. Previously, she had invited everyone to arrive a half hour earlier for good, hot soup. But if her house was without power, were we looking at gazpacho and vichyssoise? She hadn’t lost power, which not only meant Mari and I would enjoy a hot meal, we would also be sitting in a warm and cozy living room. Here was one occasion when I was ready to pray all night! Yeah, and stay warm.
I shared with the group that we were without power. So I requested the obvious: that despite how passionately I love braving the tundra of southeastern Pennsylvania during the winter months – as much as a fish enjoys sunbathing on a Florida beach in midsummer – that maybe our electric would be restored by the time we arrived back home.
Later, when we drove down the block of our neighborhood, it was lit up like a Christmas tree. I thought maybe I had missed the advertisement about a January 6th Evening Parade, the traditional feast date of the visit of the Magi celebrating Christ’s Birth. But no, it was but six Met Ed vehicles, with their emergency lights flashing, forewarning us that our house was slowly dropping in temperature. Sure enough, when we walked in and checked our thermostat, it registered 58º. I called the emergency hotline of Met Ed to request an estimated time of power-resumption. “11:30pm.” Well, that’s better than hearing, “We’re working on it.”
I bundled up in my long winter coat, underneath a fur-lined blanket, with my Eagles elf cap pulled over my ears. Jabez, our Teacup Chihuahua, nestled into my lap, a purely self-serving maneuver on his part to absorb my dwindling body heat. And Jacob, my personal feline collar, wrapped himself around my neck. Normally, I would be less enthusiastic about his insistence to perch in so inconvenient a spot, but not last night. I lit a flashlight and began to pass the time doing a Sudoku.
11:30pm came and went with no flickers of hope. I dosed off to sleep, joining Jabez and Jacob in their slumber. Sometime during some forgettable dream during my first REM stage of the night, Mari’s voice from upstairs pierced the darkness: “The lights are back on!” Not downstairs they weren’t. I couldn’t remember if we had left any lights on before the electric went out. Obviously we didn’t. With flashlight still in hand, I headed for the nearest light switch. “Wonderful! 60 watts is really 60 watts.” Then reaching for the thermostat, which now read 52º, and with the exuberance of a five-year old opening his Christmas presents, I kicked winter out of my house. The furnace kicked on, and in order to picture the next scene, you’d have to know a little bit about our 100+-year old house. We have but ONE furnace vent that heats the entire house. It strategically lay on our kitchen floor and is a grate-covered opening about 2′ square. It performs its duty well in warming the whole house. But on this exceptional air-conditioned night, it brought me inexpressible joy as I stood atop that vent to thaw out.
I checked a battery-operated clock. It was 12:30am. So where am I going with this protracted account of last night? We often take for granted what we have until it’s removed. I paused to thank the Lord for the blessing of heat. But as I did so, my mind retreated back to a conversation Mari had had earlier in the evening with John Vacaro. As many of you know, he tragically lost an adult son in October of 2013. Parents never plan on burying one of their offspring and statistically the odds are always in their favor. John was an exception. But how he has handled his personal loss has inspired many of his friends to live each moment all-the-more by faith in Jesus. John said it all, when he said to Mari, “Nothing is like losing a child. Everything else is so trivial.”
John’s correct. Mari and I lost our heat – and that for only 7 hours. Trivial. John lost a son – and that for a lifetime! Tragic! Yes, we all plead guilty to taking-for-granted things like home heat. And we need to thank the Lord for all these daily blessings that can be here one moment and gone the next. But these kinds of things all eventually come back. BUT let’s NEVER take for granted the blessing of loved ones, younger or older, who are here now, but one day may be gone for our lifetime.