Where is your power?

Today was a first for me, we had no power for just over 8 hours. Yes I have gone through times (some longer than this one) without any electricity. The difference today is that this was a planned power outage, no storm, no car crashing into a power pole, no squirrel getting into a transformer and getting fried. This one was announced a month ago. You see the area power company needed to move the main power poles coming into our town and to do it safely they had to kill the power to those poles and thus to our whole town for 8 hours today. Now we knew this was coming and plans were made by businesses and people for this day. Even with all of that I barely got the ice in the cooler and a few things out of the fridge when the power went off.

It was strange to have no power in the house when nothing was wrong, no storm, etc... My wife and I each flipped switches a few times this morning out of sheer habit, but nothing happened. No computer, no TV, no hair dryer (this one didn't have any impact for me), no air conditioning, no coffee maker (now this one really impacted me) and no garage door opener. We went out of town for most of the day, I did some work at a coffee shop for a while and we saw quite a few people from our town doing the same thing. The power came on about 10 minutes after we returned home and then I headed to the office to get some more work done.

It really made me think about what I depend on, I mean the stuff I have come to feel I really need. The bottom line is that very few of my "can't do withouts" are worth much with power. So when the electric company cut us all off, most things stopped. It would have looked silly to be sitting in front of a blank computer, or a dark tv screen, it would have foolish to be waiting on a powerless coffeemaker or waving a silent hair dryer around your head.

But how often do we attempt to go on with things spiritually on our own, without plugging into God, into his power and will for our lives and our church? How silly is it to be going through all the motions with no power?

Here's to being plugged into God and His power, to being in His will and purpose for our life and for our church. Here's to us stopping the silly practice of just going through the motions with none of God's power. Let's get plugged in, powered up and turned on so we can make a difference.