The Night the Power Grid Went Dark

On August 14, 2003, a software bug in an Ohio power company triggered the largest blackout in North American history. Within nine seconds, fifty-five million people from Detroit to New York City lost electricity. Traffic lights died. Subway trains froze underground. Skyscrapers went black floor by floor, like candles snuffed out in sequence.

But something unexpected happened that night in Manhattan. With every streetlight dark and every neon sign silenced, New Yorkers stumbled onto their rooftops and fire escapes — and gasped. For the first time in their lives, they could see the Milky Way stretched across the sky above Times Square. The stars had been there all along, blazing with ancient fire, but the city's small, manufactured lights had blinded everyone to them.

Psalm 97 declares that the heavens proclaim the righteousness of the Most High, that all peoples see His glory. Mountains melt like wax before the Lord of all the earth. Yet we live surrounded by the artificial glow of our own achievements, our own certainties, our own little kingdoms — and we mistake them for the real light.

Sometimes the Almighty allows our power grids to fail. He lets the things we trust go dark — not to punish us, but to remind us what was shining above us all along. When every lesser light is extinguished, the God who is exalted far above all gods finally becomes visible to eyes that had forgotten how to look up.