Icy limbs and power lines don’t mix well.
The Deep South was struck by yet another snow and ice event last week. A good chunk of the entire state was shut down for days and thousands upon thousands of people were without power for days as well. My parents had no electricity from Wednesday until Sunday. These events happen from time to time. The power companies called in reinforcements from Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi just to name a few.
What really surprised me about this particular outage was the anger that I saw expressed on Facebook. By all accounts, these power company employees worked throughout the days and nights with little sleep. They were doing their best. I didn’t hear any reports of them sitting around at doughnut shops on extended coffee breaks.
When I was a kid and there was a snow storm, we lost power. It wasn’t a question of if, it was a question of when. We sat around the fireplace at night and ran around during the day. We were on well water so when the power went out, there was no water either. We were also usually the last ones to get turned back on, too. We dealt with it.
It’s amazing to me at how just twenty-five years or so later, the power going out has become catastrophic and the power companies working to restore it are somehow agents of evil. What has happened to our can-do attitude?
My dad is in his seventies and he says he remembers his family getting their first light bulb. How in the world did they survive?
As I was contemplating all of this, a verse from the Bible kept playing through my mind. “In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!” Mark 10:25. Those are red-letter words, spoken by Jesus himself, so we had better pay attention.
What is he talking about? Does God hate rich people? I don’t think so. I think that when you have to depend on God for your “daily bread,” and He provides it, it’s easier to grow your faith. When every one of your physical needs is met and taken for granted, like we always have plenty to eat and a roof over our heads and heat and electricity, we have to make a sincere effort to believe in something greater than ourselves.
Our souls need feeding either way, but it’s easier to neglect our souls than our physical bodies. We are so blessed in this country and when compared with the majority of the world, we are all wealthy here. Christianity is growing fastest in Asia, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The people in these countries have far less material possessions than we do and their basic needs often are not met. Is this a coincidence? They know their need for God because they must depend on Him daily.
No one wants to be cold or inconvenienced and being without heat can be dangerous. But, this may be the ideal opportunity to take stock of who we are and decide who we want to be. The temporary days of uncomfortable inconvenience for us are what life looks like everyday for a huge population of the world.
We are so blessed that we sometimes forget to be thankful. Our abundance may be like the eye of that needle. Let’s remember to give thanks. What do you think? I’d love to hear from you.
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂
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