Light in the Blackout of 2003

THE DATE was August 14, 2003. Mrs. Evans and I were in New York on our way back to Dallas. We went to LaGuardia Airport to catch our flight.

I went to curbside check-in to check in our bags. The line was not moving. I waited twenty minutes, and still there was no movement in the line. I got out of the line to find out what was going on.

The baggage handler said the airport had no power. It was then that we found out that we were caught in the blackout of 2003 where the whole East Coast went dark due to a power grid failure.

No planes were coming in, no planes were going out. We couldn’t check in. The conveyor belts to deliver the baggage weren’t working because there was no power. So we waited.

We waited three hours along with thousands of other people at the airport who were also stuck in this miserable situation. It was a steamy, hot August day, with no solution in sight. Finally, as darkness was coming over the city of New York and the airport, we were told the airport was shutting down.

Without power or light, or anything else, the airport was shutting down. So thousands of people like ourselves were stuck. We’d already checked out of our hotel room and had no place to go. I got on my telephone and called my sister to ask her to help me find a hotel room.

Everybody at the airport was looking for a room and I needed all the help I could get. She called me back soon after and said she’d found one room at the Crown Plaza LaGuardia.

She said it was the last one and that they would hold it for me for ten minutes. We ran out into the dark of night, hailed a cab, and got to the Crown Plaza LaGuardia just in the nick of time. Due to the power outage, candles were now lighting the hotel. We registered by hand because the computers weren’t working.

There was no TV, no air-conditioning, and no hot food because nothing was working. We pulled back the shades and opened the window to get some air in our room. That’s when we saw it.

Immediately across the street from us was a Marriott Hotel. It was all lit up. I mean this place was popping. We heard music playing through our open window.

The other hotel was so close we could see people moving around and eating outside. It was clear to me that we were in the wrong place. I had one simple question: How could there be that much light in this much darkness? It was about 9:00 at night, but I had to get my inquisitive question answered, so I walked back down the steps and crossed over to the Marriott.

I walked into an air-conditioned Marriott Hotel. All the TVs were on and were tuned in to the newscast reporting on how dark New York City was. Folks were lined up at the restaurant to get hot food. There was all this light and joy and music and laughter and excitement in a dark situation.

I went over to the assistant manager and I said, “Mister, I don’t understand. It’s dark everywhere. The airport is right over there and it’s dark. My hotel is right over yonder and it’s dark too.

Everything is dark, and yet you are lit up like a Christmas tree. How can this be?” He said, “It’s really fairly simple. When we built this hotel, we built it with a gas generator.

We’ve got power on the inside that is not determined by circumstances on the outside. Even though there’s nothing happening out there, there’s plenty happening in here.” When you accepted Jesus Christ, He came into the inside.

So what’s happening on the outside shouldn’t determine whether or not you’ve got a lighthouse on the inside. What’s happening out there shouldn’t determine your joy. God has given us a generator of life and liberty in our souls through our relationship with Jesus Christ. We don’t have to live our lives determined by life’s circumstances.