Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

• Matthew 5:14-16

The old joke – a joke that was not funny – is that “the company never stops working.”

Well, what if you have a power outage?

A new company president came in and made this claim.  Someone informed him, because the new boss had never lived in southwest Pennsylvania before, that we often have power outages.  He slammed his fists on the table and demanded that when that happens, we will do our work by candlelight.

Ninety percent of our work was on the computer.  Most of the other ten percent of our work was over the telephone.  Neither of those things work during a power outage.  Thus, for months, we “encouraged” each other to do our computer work by candlelight.

Recently, there was a derecho that hit southwest Pennsylvania and tens of thousands of people lost power.  The power at my house was out for four days.  The phones, hearing aids, and other small electronic devices could be charged in the car.  The entire neighborhood spent hours in the car, not going anywhere, just charging their devices.

I did not have such a charger for my laptop, but the battery gave me about four hours of computer use.  But I had a remote keyboard and mouse.  I needed a hands-free means of illuminating the work area.  Sure, I could have used candles, but candles can fall over.  Candles have wax, that if spilled, could ruin a keyboard.

But I did have some high intensity flashlights.  Then the problem became too intense and too concentrated.

I tried something like a hurricane light that I may highlight in another post, but if not careful, the method that I used burned out the “bulb” of the flashlight.

So, I widened the light, diffusing the light as much as possible.  Then, I wrapped a folded handkerchief around the flashlight.  I wrapped it loosely and kept the handkerchief folded.  I did not want the handkerchief or the flashlight getting too hot.  Some of the light shined into an unused portion of the room, but the diffused light illuminated the mouse and keyboard.  I even had enough light to read my notes.

Sure, about four hours later, the battery for the laptop ran out of power.

But I started this blog to let my light shine.

The Scripture tells only part of the story.

If you place a burning candle under a bowl, the point is not that the light from the candle is not seen.  Surely, that happens.  But the oxygen in the bowl is used up and the light is extinguished.  You must relight the candle to continue sharing the light.

I might not have had internet.  I went to the church to recharge the laptop.  I was ahead of schedule in my writing so that the “light” could continue to shine even with a local power outage.  But the writing continued – severely limited – but it continued by something quite similar to candlelight.  When the power was restored, the new files were uploaded to the cloud and then scheduled posts were added to the blogsite.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.