Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Who Turned Out The Lights?



Last week we received a notification from our electric company that they were going to be doing some maintenance on our lines and our power would be out for 10-20 minutes early one morning. Well, this morning was that morning.

At 4:59 AM, our power went out. I woke up as a result of the deafening silence (we have an air filter in our room that provides white noise when power is on). Since my alarm was set for 5:00 AM, I got up - really bummed that I had lost out on that extra minute of sleep.

One thing I noticed is how incredibly dark it was. We normally have night lights throughout the house, so even at 5:00 AM it is usually not too dark - but this morning it was pitch black.

About two minutes later our smoke detectors went off throughout our whole house. Now everyone was up! Apparently one of the detector's batteries was out and since there was no electricity running to them, they let us know this with screaming beeping.

My wife quickly got a flashlight and found some batteries and gave them to me so I could swap the batteries in all our alarms. What amazed me though, was how bright the flashlight seemed in our totally dark surroundings. This wasn't a special high-powered flashlight either - just a normal cheap one.

Many of us work in dark places everyday, with people who are lost. Just think, much like the flashlight we used this morning, you can be a bright light in your dark surroundings as well.

No comments: