Wal-Mart Flashlights?

Every once in awhile a person has one of those “moments” in their faith life. That moment when all of a sudden you gain some sort of reality to everything you believe in. Not as to say that you didn’t truly believe before, but somehow you gain this indescribable feeling of solidity to your beliefs.

I have been going to a passion mime at Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp every Thursday, all summer long, for as long as I can remember. I always would watch people have these grand eye-opening moments whilst watching the mime and it had always been a hope of mine that someday I might have one of these revelations. In fact, I wanted this so bad that I would try to force myself into this emotional state of vulnerability. Seems silly right? Yeah I thought so too, but I was sort of desperate.

So I went to the mime one Thursday, same as I always do, and sat with the same people, and went through my same routine of trying to focus on the mime, the story, the lights, the sounds, and anything else that might force some hint of a spiritual moment out of me. Much to my dismay, the people around me would not shut up. C’mon people, I am trying to have a moment here and you are interrupting it. In fact I got so pissed off about it that I got up and left.

I wandered out to a bridge near by going over the river that brings meaning to the name of the camp. As I stood on the bridge I looked around, in the water, in the trees, and in the all too fitting gloomy sky. I started praying. Maybe praying is a bad word. I started to talk at God. Let me tell you first and foremost that it is hard to hold a conversation with a guy you can’t see. So I stood there and talked to the river, and the trees, and the clouds. At first it was in my head, then I became vocal, ten minutes goes by and I have started to raise my voice a bit out of sheer frustration and anger towards life, towards God, and towards the fact that I don’t know what to look in the eye when I yell at him. It never crossed my mind that he wasn’t listening, somehow I knew that. What got to me was that he wouldn’t talk back, and I felt like I had been getting the silent treatment for some time now.

I kept running in circles around the same questions; what do I do with my life, where do I go now, what am I doing here, why the hell won’t you talk to me? Sometimes I swear at God, but something tells me he doesn’t care too much. By now fifteen or twenty minutes had gone by and the mime was over. A little squirrelly guy started walking towards the bridge with a very dimly lit flashlight pointed straight at his feet. He stared at his feet and focused on the light as he walked through the road, onto the bridge and to the other side. He paid so much attention to his feet and to the light that he almost ran into me as he walked by. As he walked off the bridge and into the field on the other side I chuckled a bit because this guy was so adamant at lighting the ground around his feet and so focused on what little light he could create when everyone knows that if you turn off your flashlight, the sky is bright enough to see where you are going.

Then it hit me. I don’t know what “it” is, but it must be the same thing that smacked Moses in the head when God finally had to resort to pyrotechnics to get him to pay attention. I had cried out to God for a sign because I was too thick to get it, and well, he gave it to me. This guy I laughed at couldn’t be a better metaphor for my life if I tried to write one. True evidence that God knows me better then I do. That little squirrelly guy stood at one bank and prepared himself to cross a bridge and continue on the other bank. It’s a gloomy night so being the prepared camper that he is; he retrieved his two dollar Wal-Mart flashlight and proceeded. Carefully as he crossed the bridge he stared deep into the light at his feet to avoid tripping and finally crossed the bridge and stared at his feet until I lost sight of him.

I have always been a very prepared camper when it comes to life, nerves of steel, the emotional cornerstone for my friends, and I always have a flashlight, but I think what I lack is faith. There is not a doubt in my mind that the squirrelly guy got to his cabin, but look at what he missed. I am a hundred percent sure that if I keep going the way I am, staring at my feet, and lighting my own path, that I will live to a ripe old age, have a few kids, make no real contribution to the world, and die. Well that just sounds like crap if you ask me.

Even on the gloomiest of nights, in the pits of your life, God provides enough light for you to see your path. “Thy word is light unto my feet and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105). God provides us with all the light we need to guide us through life. He created the sun, he placed the stars in the sky, and we did what? Make Wal-Mart flashlights? Something tells me God has the light thing covered. He provides us with his word to comfort us, to guide us, and to give us strength. He tells us “I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages; even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together. Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” (John 4:31-38) But how are we supposed to reap what has already been sown if we are busy staring at our feet and trying to forge our own trail? If we are busy trying to provide our own comfort and our own strength from ourselves? It is impossible I tell you.

It was that night that my eyes opened. I wasn’t without questions anymore, but I knew that God was listening and that God does talk back. More importantly though, I learned that we don’t always know what our next step in life is. Nobody has ever known where they will be thirty years down the road, most of us don’t know what we are doing next week. But if you place your faith in the word, if you let the word light your path, if you gather your strength from God, and if you find your comfort in the word then regardless of what lies on the other side of the bridge you will be equipped with something much more powerful then a Wal-Mart flashlight.

Alex Krumm

August 2006