The Lighthouse Keeper of Cape Bonavista

For thirty-seven years, Gerald Howell climbed the spiral stairs of the Cape Bonavista Lighthouse in Newfoundland every evening at dusk. Even after the Canadian government automated most lighthouses in the 1990s, Gerald kept showing up. He polished the lens, trimmed the grounds, and welcomed visitors who made the drive out to the rocky headland.

When a journalist asked why he bothered, Gerald said something pastors should write on their study walls: "A lighthouse doesn't decide when to shine. It shines because that is what it was built to do. The moment it stops, somebody out on the water pays the price."

Jesus told His disciples they were salt and light — not that they should try to become salt and light. The identity was already given. The only question was whether they would live it out or hide it under a bushel basket. And He raised the stakes even further: your righteousness, He said, must go deeper than rule-keeping. It must reach down into the character of who you are.

Gerald never made headlines. No one built a statue in his honor. But fishermen along that coast knew his light, and they trusted it with their lives.

The Almighty does not ask us to be famous. He asks us to be faithful — to shine consistently, to preserve what is good, to let the quiet integrity of a Christ-shaped life do its steady, saving work in a dark and decaying world.