Last Light (25 page)

“They’re about our age and have children the same ages as Deni and Jeff. Before they moved, they sold their children’s bikes in a garage sale, so they’re stranded. I think we should give them one of ours.”

Doug thought he’d heard her wrong. “What?”

“Doug, imagine what this outage would be like if we didn’t have bikes. They might have an emergency or something. They need a way to get around.”

Doug couldn’t believe he was hearing this. “I understand loaning it when they have to go somewhere, Kay, but not
giving
it to them. We need our bikes. It’s the only thing making this whole thing bearable.”

“They need them, too. We have six, Doug. We can do without one.”

“So how come you’re so charitable to them, but you were so upset when I gave Amber a gun?”

“I was upset because you told her she could have it without even asking me. But I’m asking you now. I haven’t promised it to them yet.”

“Then don’t give it. Tell them they can borrow it when they need it, but I want it back.”

Kay didn’t liked it, but she finally agreed.

Doug lay in bed that night, his rifle on the bed table next to him. Jeff was taking first watch. As exhausted as Doug was, he couldn’t sleep.

Desperation was starting to sink in as he thought about the dwindling food supply in the pantry. What would they do when they ran out?

Each time he drifted off, he dreamed of himself and his family sitting in a basement room with shelves and shelves of things. Diapers, baby food, bags of flour, rice, water jugs, cans of beans and vegetables and soups, candles and kerosene lamps, toilet paper and napkins, plastic utensils, paper plates. People banged on the door, crying for him to open it and share, but he and his family sat there among their provisions, trying to ignore the cries of need outside.

He woke in a cold sweat, got out of bed, and went into the kitchen. Jeff sat at the kitchen table, nodding over last month’s
Time.
It had been a slow news month, so they’d focused on fad diets.

“Must be a great article.” His voice startled Jeff awake.

“Sorry, Dad. I was trying to stay awake.”

Doug smiled and pulled the magazine toward him. “They left one diet out. The running-out-of-food diet. Guaranteed to work.”

Jeff stretched. “Yeah. Or the giving-it-all-away diet.”

Doug looked at him in the lamplight. Had his son been worrying about the food they’d shared with Amber? Was that hoarding mentality plaguing him at night, too?

“Son, go on to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I’ll take the watch.”

“You sure?”

Doug nodded, yawning. Jeff got up and quietly padded up the stairs.

Carrying the kerosene lamp into his study, Doug sat down at his desk. His Bible lay on the corner, so he pulled it to him and stared down at the cover. He needed to read it . . . but where should he look for the answers to all the questions plaguing him?

He needed to know how to act in a time of crisis, when they didn’t know if they had enough food or provisions, when people around them were desperate and in trouble. He needed to know what the line was between caring for your family and caring for your neighbors. He needed to understand what God wanted from him during this outage.

Teach me, Lord. Show me what You want me to see.

As he prayed, the Lord’s Prayer came to his mind.
Our Father who art in heaven . . .

No, he didn’t need to pray that. He needed to spill his guts to God, cry out to him for real answers. He needed to hear God’s voice, not recite some rote prayer that didn’t cover his needs.

Give us this day our daily bread. . .

Something told him to find that passage in the Bible. Where had Jesus said it? He filed through his memory bank. The Sermon on the Mount. Quickly, he turned to that passage—Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

And as he began to read, he realized why God had led him there.

Kay woke halfway through the night and felt the bed next to her. It was empty. Doug still hadn’t surrendered to sleep.

She lay there a moment, staring up at the opaque darkness, wishing for the light on her clock that she used to complain about. She had a washcloth that she threw over the red digital readout, and another that covered the cable box next to the television. The slightest light used to keep her awake—now the utter darkness disturbed her. It was like a living thing, its tentacles reaching around and into her, changing her in ways she didn’t expect.

She sat up in the blackness, hating what this outage had done to her. It had caused tension in her marriage, made her angry and brooding. She and Doug were moving through their days like business partners rather than lovers. Loneliness enveloped her.

She got out of bed, slipped into her bedroom slippers, and felt her way through the house. She saw a yellow glow coming from the study, and stepped into the doorway.

Doug sat at his desk, studying the Bible that lay open before him, under the glow of the kerosene lamp.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

He looked up at her, and she saw the dark circles under his eyes. “No. You either?”

She shook her head. “It’s too dark, if you can believe that.”

He smiled and reached for her, pulling her onto his lap. She melted like butter when he did that. Sliding her arms around his neck, she kissed him.

It had been a long time since it was just the two of them.

Keeping her head against his, she looked down at his Bible. “Find any answers there?”

“Yeah. Even some I didn’t want to see.”

“Oh yeah?”

He rubbed his stubbled jaw. “We’re doing this all wrong, Kay. All the hoarding, all the clinging. I was just flipping through, trying to find relevant passages. Trying to understand what God might be doing, and what He might want from us.”

“And?”

“And Matthew 5 and 6 kind of hit me between the eyes.”

She looked at the page. “The Sermon on the Mount?”

“That’s right. It’s full of stuff we need right now. Like in chapter 5, verse 42. ‘Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.’ ”

“But, Doug, that’s for a time of normalcy. We’re in survival mode. If we gave to everyone who asked for something, we might not have what our family needs. I understand why you didn’t want me to give the bike away.”

“And I understand why you didn’t want me to give the gun. But look at chapter 6, verses 25 through 34.”

Kay almost didn’t want to know what it said. Grudgingly, she looked down at the passage, and began to read: “ ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?’ ” She paused and looked up.

“Go on,” Doug said.

“ ‘Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?’ ”

She stopped reading and got off of Doug’s lap, moved across the room to a chair in the shadows.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She sighed. “It’s not that simple. People all over the world go hungry. They starve to death. I know God
can
feed them, but sometimes He doesn’t.”

“Sometimes He sends us to do it.” Doug’s eyes held hers.

“So what do you want us to do? Give away all our food? Put our family in jeopardy?”

“I don’t know.” He looked back down at the passage. “Look what Jesus said here: ‘Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.’ ”

Kay pulled her feet up beneath her. “Boy, that’s for sure.”

Doug rubbed his tired eyes. “Kay, I know you hate uncertainty. I do, too. I hate not knowing what’s going on, why this happened. I hate wondering how I’m going to provide for the family, when I’ve always been able to do a good job of that before. But I think God is telling us something tonight. He’s saying that we don’t need to worry. We need to have faith. And we need to give to the people around us who have needs. Instead of worrying, we need to be seeking His kingdom and His righteousness.”

Kay came back out of the shadows and sat on the desk, just inside the circle of light. “I want to be a Christian in this, Doug. If there’s some kind of test He’s putting us through, I want to pass it. But how? What does it mean to seek Him first? I’ve always thought it meant starting your day reading the Bible and praying, going to church, thinking about Him. But what does it mean in
this
context? When people are out there looting and killing, and all the things we’ve relied on aren’t working? When our minds are so full of all the stuff that has to get done, how do we seek Him first?”

Doug studied the passage again. “It says to seek His kingdom and His righteousness. Maybe that means that we look at this as an opportunity. Maybe we see it as a way to do His kingdom work. What would Jesus do if He were here? He wouldn’t be hoarding, I’ll tell you that. He’d be out going door-to-door to see who needed what. He’d help people. He’d show them love. And because He loved them, they’d want to follow Him.”

She sighed. “Is that why God let this happen? To see if we had it in us to be like Christ?”

“Why
wouldn’t
He let it happen? There are countries where most of the population functions without electricity. Why are we so special? He knows we can get by without it. He might just want to see what we’re made of.”

“I think He might be disappointed.”

“We might be disappointed in ourselves. But we need to think about what He wants to teach us in all this. And we need to be ready to learn it.”

Kay started to cry, and Doug reached up and wiped the tear from her cheek. She caught his hand and pressed it against her face.

“What if we used this as an opportunity for God’s kingdom, Kay? What if we didn’t see it as being about us, but about them? In Matthew 5, He talks about being salt and light. What if we really were salt and light, Kay? What would we do?”

Kay laced her fingers through Doug’s and wiped her tears. They were tears of purpose, like the tears she cried in church, when the preacher talked of their kingdom work, and reminded them that they were to continue the work that Jesus started.

“I’ve always thought I trusted Jesus,” she whispered. “But it was kind of easy, living in a four-thousand-square-foot house, parking my Expedition next to your Mercedes, cooking in a state-of-the-art kitchen and relaxing in the air-conditioning, in front of twenty-four-hour television that entertained us and informed us about everything going on in the world.”

“Now’s your chance to show that you trust Him without all that stuff, too.”

Her face twisted as she met his eyes. “I hope it’s true. I hope I do.”

His smile warmed her. “There’s one way to find out. It’s time to start storing up our treasures in heaven, instead of hoarding them on earth.” He got up and pulled her into his arms, and held her while she cried. Then, sweeping her hair back from her face, he whispered, “I think we need to pray. If we have willing hearts, we need a plan. And I don’t have a clue how to start.”

She pressed her forehead against his, and slid her arms around his neck. “You’re right. Let’s ask God how.”

Clinging to each other, they began to pray.

thirty-two

The windup watch that Doug had found in the back of his dresser drawer said it was seven a.m. From his children’s reaction when he tried to wake them, one would have thought it was still dark.

They assembled at the kitchen table in the light of the bay window, looking bleary-eyed and disheveled as they munched on the last of the Pop-Tarts.