Powerless

So, I would have written yesterday, but my plans were changed when at 9 in the morning - BLINK - the lights went out. I know it sounds funny to hear that a guy who works for the electric company would be stuck at home, and out of power. It's even funnier when you know that I had just turned down a request for overtime help on the phone. I would have gone to work, had it been an outage in my service area, but it wasn't, so I didn't. It was too beautiful a morning. The reasons were myriad : the snow falling outside was too beautiful to miss (sometimes snow is much prettier when you can watch it fall from the comfort of your couch), the company was good, the Pinochle game was ready to start, and mostly I was enjoying being close to my fireside. It did seem like retribution that the power cut out only a few short minutes after the phone call from work.

Sometimes, like yesterday, the loss of power can make a day even better. Instead of watching the television, or listening to music, we played games with my wife's parents and enjoyed the kind of cozy day that comes from having no distractions. It was a wonderfully holy day. We didn't go to church, but that didn't stop God from setting aside our day for a more quiet purpose. The book I've been reading, Death By Suburb, had a chapter on the subject. Honoring the Sabbath, and making it holy. Setting aside a day to be free from the ever-present, schedule driven, Western minded constraints of time. We often forget to make the Sabbath holy. Granted, most American Christians call Sunday, the day of rest. The problem is that we forget to actually make Sunday holy. Too often we forget the meaning of the word, Holy, means to be set apart. The phones ring, the television blares, ipods isolate, and work from the rest of the week bleeds over. Yesterday, God removed the distractions for me. I enjoyed time with the family, had a restful nap, talked with my wife, played with my dog, and I read. Minutes and hours dissapeared, and time flowed like water. No commercial breaks.