Giving Thanks for Electricity

This is a somewhat late post, as it is now the middle of January and I am here still writing about Christmas (and giving thanks). Even though Thanksgiving is long past, we should still give thanks to God for what He has done. We often take the things we always have for granted, only missing something until it disappears. During our Christmas program, we had no electricity for a while. But let me back up a bit.

In the weeks leading up to our Christmas program, we prayed hard for several things:

1. People with open hearts
2. Good weather
3. Smooth program (we had multiple special items that were not very well rehearsed)
4. Cooperative technology (sometimes the computer would refuse to work)
5. God will be glorified

We forgot about the electricity.

We assumed that electricity would be fine as blackouts are rare. We only get blackouts during heavy rain, which happens two or three times a year. We get more power outages than most highly developed countries, but even Las Vegas could not handle the heavy rain during CES (a big technology show) last year. 

Christmas Sunday dawned bright and sunny (so no chance for power outages, right?), and we happily thanked God for His faithfulness. Our last minute rehearsals were also pretty successful, and we even did two runs of the program. Slowly, the hall filled up as people entered. We thought that the hall would be half-empty as usual, but instead, it was filled. Praise God! Under the steady hum of conversation, participants in the program did a last-minute check of everything.

Suddenly, the light disappeared. 

Nobody could see anything. What do we do now?

A guy called the district council, and they informed him that electricity had gone out in the whole area. Generally, that meant that the electricity would be out for a few hours. Should we have our Christmas play in the dark with candles and hand-held flashlights? We can call that the real Bethlehem, anyway. I wish that I could say that we all sat down and prayed together, but it was too chaotic. Nobody really knew what was going to happen.

Just as mysteriously the lights went out, they came back on. Everybody cheered. We all breathed a sigh of relief and a prayer of thanks to God.

This experience reminded me that we should give thanks for everything, including electricity, water, sunshine, heating, etc. In addition, God is gracious in the sense that we do not need to remember to pray for every single thing too. For example, Turkey's gas consumption (generally used for heating) has reached record levels this winter, and there "were no downtime or cuts." I didn't even know that we could lose that! Often, we do not omit some items, but God still life go smoothly. In this day and age, we cannot err by giving too much thanks to God.

So let us remember to give thanks to Him this year!