California has been barraged with storms for the past couple of days. On Friday, during the brunt of the storm, with winds howling at ferocious speeds, my home lost electric power for about five hours. There are others in my area who as of this writing (two days later) are still without power. However, to put this into perspective, a friend who used to live in Cuba informed me that the average outage in Cuba is twelve hours with some people being without power for forty hours at a time. And, this without the provocation of a storm.
It never ceases to amaze me all the things you cannot do without electricity. Being a person who tries to maximize her time, I immediately looked for things to do since I couldn't be on my computer. But I couldn’t cook, iron, wash clothes, vacuum, watch a DVD, or even get the car out of the garage, because the power wasn't flowing. Even homeschooling was difficult because, with such an overcast day, it was difficult to get enough light with candles to do much for long. How glad I was that most of my responsibilities that required the aid of electricity were already accomplished and that, by the time night rolled around, our lights and heater were once again functioning.
How often do we in the course of life try to accomplish tasks without the Power from Him who owns the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory? How often, during the course of educating our children and helping them plan for their future adult lives do we wander aimlessly trying to figure out exactly where to put our time and efforts? Like all good life lessons, this "annoying storm" helped me realize that the dominion words of the Lord's Prayer, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," are only possible because we pray to the source of all the energy, wisdom, and provision we need to faithfully place every area of our lives and thoughts under the rule of our Savior and His perfect law-word.
We derive great benefits from electricity, but tend to take it for granted and only truly appreciate when it is not available to us. We also derive great benefits from the grace of God without adequately acknowledging and thanking Him for His daily provision.
- Andrea G. Schwartz
Andrea Schwartz is Chalcedon’s family and Christian education advocate, and the author of eight books including: A House for God: Building a Kingdom-Driven Family, The Biblical Trustee Family: Understanding God’s Purpose for Your Household, Empowered: Developing Strong Women for Kingdom Service, Woman of the House: A Mother’s Role in Building a Christian Culture, and The Homeschool Life: Discovering God’s Way to Family-Based Education. She’s also the co-host of the Out of the Question podcast, the Chalcedon podcast, and has an active teaching schedule with women and high schooled students.. She can be reached at [email protected].