When the Lights Came Back On

On September 28, 2017, Maria Gonzalez sat on her porch in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, staring into a darkness so complete she could not see her own hands. Hurricane Maria had wiped out the entire electrical grid. No streetlights. No glow from a neighbor's window. Nothing. For months, 3.4 million people lived in a blackout that swallowed the island whole. Maria said the worst part was not the heat or the ruined food — it was the feeling that the darkness would never end.

Then, one evening in February, a utility crew finished reconnecting her neighborhood's transformer. When the switch was thrown, light flooded the street. Neighbors poured out of their homes, weeping and embracing. Children who had done homework by candlelight for five months stood blinking in the brightness. Maria later told a reporter, "It was like the world started over."

She had no idea how close her words were to the oldest story ever told. Genesis tells us the earth was formless and void, shrouded in deep darkness — and the Spirit of the Almighty hovered over that chaos like a parent bending over a crib. Then God spoke. Three words — "Let there be light" — and everything changed. No committee. No negotiation with the darkness. Just the voice of the Creator, and light existed where it had never been before.

Whatever darkness you are sitting in tonight, the same God who spoke light into existence has not lost His voice.