Last night, the power went out in our small town. It was cold, down in the 20s. It was one of those nights when our preparation for a power outage paid off. I grabbed a bedside flashlight and located the battery-powered lamp that had been positioned nearby. I turned on the lamp and placed it at the foot of our bed for Jan t find her way. I then walked into our pitch-black living room following the beam of my flashlight to start a fire in our woodstove.

I went to the kitchen and turned on our gas cooking stove and made a pot of French press coffee since our electric coffee maker was inoperative. It was now a bit after 3:00 am, our normal time to rise, so apart from it being dark, it was no big deal. Daylight was still a few hours away, but all is well in our home.

When I brought Jan her cup of coffee she said, “This is what it might be like if an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) bomb went off.” In case you don’t know what an EMP is it’s part of the weapons arsenal of several nations that destroy infrastructure, not people, crops, or buildings. Its detonation fries the power grid of a city/region, all the electronic circuits of our appliances that allow us to live a life of ease, and kills the computer-dependent systems of our cars leaving them out of commission along the side of the road. It’s a bomb used by an invading army that doesn’t want to walk into a Chernobyl-like landscape to occupy a nation.

Being prepared is not some doomsday nutcase fantasy. It is simply wisdom. If what we naively rely on and expect to be forever functional was either gone or no longer working, what would we do? If our basic preparations had not been in place beforehand, Jan and I would be tripping over furniture and each other sitting in a cold home instead of sipping hot coffee in front of the dancing flames of our warm woodstove. 

The importance of having the ability to survive “off the grid” has taken on new meaning when people in positions of power in our nation are telling us we need to get rid of gas stoves, remove woodstoves from our homes and drive electric vehicles. Along with those demands we are told to trust windmills on windless days and hope solar panels work when it’s overcast. Commonsense makes a lot of sense when the power goes out and we are transported back to a circa 1880 version of life on a ranch when we are the only ones responsible for our survival.

This whole “be prepared” conversation applies to our faith. What do we need to not only survive but prosper as a believer in a dark and cold season of life? There are three things that will keep our faith alive – Word, Spirit, and Fellowship. 

This morning, as I sat in the darkness, I recited memorized Scripture. I invited the Lord into my dark place in prayer and I interacted with Jan in the darkness. All three elements of a living faith were functioning while our normal lives were interrupted.

When the lights go out in our personal lives because of painful events like betrayal, divorce, or being given the boot from our job or from a place of familiar fellowship, we will never be left abandoned in the dark. The Word, Scripture, and Fellowship with the Lord will always be there for us if our hope is built on the person of Jesus Christ and nothing else. He becomes a never-failing Light in dark seasons illuminating our way forward until some form of normalcy returns. 

Make sure you are prepared, both in natural and spiritual matters. If you are prepared, you will always be at peace no matter what kind of darkness comes your way.

(P.S. As I type this Jan an I are seated in a Starbucks during the noon hour charging our phones and computers. We just got the news that we won’t have power until almost midnight. If that’s all we have to deal with in life, it’s not a big deal.)