Casting Light
"Why go out tonight? There won't be a soul there." As the
minister watched the rain lash against the window, the voice
that spoke inside him sounded reasonable enough. It was one of the stormiest nights of the winter.
But somehow he felt he must conduct that evening service.
So he put on his raincoat, took his lantern, and stepped out
into the blackness. The water almost blinded him as he plunged
into the teeth of the gale.
On and up he plodded until he came to his church, which stood
on a high hill along the Scottish coast. When he had opened
the door, he set the lantern on a window sill, and then sat
down to wait for his congregation - a congregation that never came.
At last, seeing he would be quite alone, he sang a hymn and
knelt and prayed. Then, his duty performed, he locked the
church and went down the hill.
Had it all been a waste of time?
The parson wondered.
But the next morning he heard a different story.
The night before, when the storm was at its worst, a fishing
vessel had been trying to make the harbor. The skipper was
floundering around in the blackness until he saw the small
light in the old church.
Without that lantern the ship would have surely been carried
onto the rocks. But thanks to those steady beams, the pilot
had brought his boat safely to port.
It was a lesson to the minister. After that, he knew that any
light he might throw into this world's darkness would never
be entirely lost.
By Vincent Edwards
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