If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

THE LIGHTS ARE ON…. Friday afternoon I’m cooking rice – or at least I think I’m cooking, when all of a sudden I notice the water isn’t heating up. So I switch units. No luck. The lights are on, and I can set the temperature all the way from 1 to 9, but the stove top remains cold to the touch.

Then, when I turn on the garage light to check the breaker, I noticed the kitchen lights dim. Now there’s a buzz in the laundry room, but no light. But when I turn the dryer on, the light over the sink grows brighter. When I hit the garage door opener, the light in the kitchen goes out.

Strange. Very strange.

By morning, the Internet is down. The modem looks good with its flickering lights, but the unit powers down when I turn on the computer. Evidently I can get on-line, only I can’t use a screen to see what I’m doing.

Disconcerting. But the coffee pot runs like a charm, so I head to my morning Bible study in good shape.

Later, when I return home, I contact my electrician. “Probably a bad neutral from the power company,” he said. I had no idea what he was talking about, but it was enough to get an emergency crew dispatched to our house.

HOOKED UP! The power people arrived promptly – thanks, Wake Forest, for being a responsive community – and the guys confirmed it was their issue to fix. The problem was, they said, “a hot leg failure.” They went on to install what they called a “service saver” and promised to return in a few days to make sure everything is right again.

What we have, essentially, is a portable one-house transformer plugged in at our meter.

So, my point in all this – other than sharing an interesting story. It turns out that my house was still hooked up to the grid, but was only receiving a trickle of energy. It was enough to make everything look like it was OK, but it couldn’t sustain any task that required any real effort to achieve.

Consequently the stove looked “on.” but wouldn’t cook. And the refrigerator light shone invitingly, but there wasn’t enough energy coming in at the back to deliver cool air – so a lot of our food spoiled.

NO LIGHT or LIFE: I couldn’t help but think about my spiritual life. How often do my little blue digital lights read “on,” “plugged in,” or “saved;” but there’s such a pitifully limited supply of light and life running into my operating system that all I do is sing hymns, read the Bible, and wave my hands – while the real work of the Gospel of Love remains undone.

What am I, a display piece? a museum exhibit? a sounding gong? a clanging cymbal? Or am I a fully activated child of the living God?

The “mainline” Christian church of the 21st Century is fading away in too many locations, for want of a more faithful, dedicated, fully operational connection to the power source. We have too many cases of “hot leg failure,” and too many of us stand there, our “on switch” glowing a comforting shade of iridescent blue, comfortably “saved,” while inside the Good News is going to rot.

So plug-in, connect all the way to the heart, invite the Spirit to fill you with power, and activate the potential you never even imagined you had.

Today is a good day to give it all back to Jesus. I’ll see you in church – DEREK