(No)Power

So yeah. This week has kinda been interesting. Not that any week isn't interesting; on the contrary, school, work, and several medical appointments always make any week exciting. However, this week, Tropical Storm Lee dumped over twelve inches of rain on our little area of Tennessee...all in two days! On both Monday and Tuesday, rain fell--constantly. I've seen rain before, and maybe even rain without thunder, but it was quite weird seeing rain fall all the time, seemingly without end!

All through Monday, and into Tuesday even, we took our electricity for granted, going about our days pretty much as planned. Tuesday lunch came--the rain was still falling, but a lot lighter than on Monday. 1:06pm. Flicker, flicker, silence--and darkness. Our electricity was out. The ceiling fan stopped twirling. The refrigerator and freezer stopped humming. The lights went out. And we were without electricity, having not a clue how long we would have to live this way. (You must understand, a couple years ago on vacation to Michigan, my grandparents' electricity went out for three days straight! So I do have some reason to worry.)

Mom had been almost done preparing our lunch when the power outage came, so we had hot food for lunch. I cleaned my room, and wrote in my journal. I was really glad that I had completed my school in the morning, as most of my school requires a computer or DVD player! Most of the afternoon, we just stayed near to our windows and did our best to do what we could without power. Since we did have unexpected time on our hands, our family worked on organizing and decluttering all our stuff in the basement. As the sun set, our one big lantern came out, and little flashlights dotted the house, giving their users at least some light. But it was still hard.

Thankfully, our power was restored just after 10pm. So we were only without power for about 9 hours. Still, it was hard. We did not know when we would have our power back. And during the outage, I once again realized a fundamental truth: you truly don't know how much you value something until it is either taken away, or threatened to be taken away. Most times, I just take the power for granted. During the outage, I didn't.

I've been thinking the past few days about this experience. It reminded me of the story of the wise and foolish virgins, found in Matthew 25. All ten went out to meet the bridegroom. However, five of them were prepared for the unexpected, and five were not. The five that were prepared had brought extra oil for their lamps, in case the bridegroom was late.

Sure enough, the bridegroom tarried. During this "tarrying" time, all ten virgins fell asleep. When they were all awakened, they hurriedly trimmed their lamps--but alas! The five foolish did not have enough oil, and the five prepared virgins did not have enough to spare. Rushing to the shops for oil, the five foolish virgins missed out on meeting the bridegroom.

I thought it was a bit ironic how closely this story matched our family's experience of this past week. Just as we didn't know when our power was going to go out, so the virgins didn't know when the bridegroom was going to come. Fine. But the difference was that some of the virgins were prepared. Our family had some light, but really not enough. Going onto deeper thoughts, I've realized: we don't know exactly when Jesus will come. We may fall asleep a bit. But are we prepared for his coming, even if it's delayed?

As for our family, Mom's gone to Wal-Mart and bought us two extra lanterns. Are we, are you ready and prepared for Christ to come?