Is Your Light Shining?

“Brightly beams our Father's mercy,
from his lighthouse evermore,
But to us, he gives the keeping
of the lights along the shore.

Let the lower lights be burning,
send a gleam across the wave.
Some poor fainting, struggling, seaman,
you may rescue, you may save….

Trim your feeble lamps my brothers,
some poor sailor tempest tossed,
Trying now to make the harbor,
in the darkness may be lost.

Let your lower lights be burning,
send a gleam across the wave,
Some poor fainting, struggling, seaman,
you may rescue, you may save.”

Let The Lower Lights Be Burning
Philip P. Bliss, 1871—

One of my friends on Face Book posted this last week. I liked it so I looked it up to see if there was a story behind it. It is a hymn written by Phillip Bliss a century ago. He wrote it because of a sermon he heard while he was living in Chicago.
A ship was trying to find the Cleveland harbor at night, in the middle of a storm. Seeing the lighthouse the captain called out, “Is this Cleveland?” When the lighthouse keeper affirmed that it was, the captain shouted,” Where are the lower lights?” “They have gone out..” the light keeper replied. “Can you make the harbor?” The captain shouted, “We must, or we will perish!”
Then he sailed the ship into the harbor, past the lighthouse and crashed into the rocks.
The lower lights talked about in the sermon are the lights below the lighthouse which define the shoreline; the lights from our windows that help vessels come into the harbor at night through the narrow channel.
“The preacher concluded his sermon saying, "Brothers and sisters, the Master will take care of the lighthouse. Let us keep the lower lights burning."

Do you shine a light for the world to see?

August gave us many opportunities to let our lights shine. First we had an earthquake, and then a hurricane blew through the area. Many people on the East Coast are without power and roads. Homes had to be evacuated. Businesses were lost. There have been many stories of people who helped their neighbors. One I enjoyed from New Hampshire or Vermont was of a family without electricity who had a disabled husband and father. A neighbor plugged in an extension cord from her own home to give electricity to her neighbor.

On another note, I’ve never been through a hurricane before. Not even an “almost” Tropical Storm.
I didn’t know how to prepare. We went to the grocery store to pick up some drinking water in case we lost our water in the apartment. The shelves were bare, empty. There was a watermelon though. Will that do in a pinch?

Our Bishop announced after we had the earthquake that he had been planning a “ Preparedness discussion in late September. Now we can discuss preparing for a hurricane also.

The county government scheduled a practice exercise to see if they were ready for a disaster. It was canceled so people could take care of the real thing. Now that we’ve tried it—how did we do?
Did you know that September is national Preparedness month
Are we prepared? Are our lower lights on? Do we know what we need to do better?
We have stored drinking water now, and batteries.
And the watermelon was delicious!