What made me chuckle was that Sunday I had shared our story about God providing light for us when all around was in darkness. It was the time when we were leaving Sulawesi and there were so many things office-wise I had to do before we left. So I worked at the office longer than I should have. Tania kept reminding me that we needed to be packing our house up in readiness for sending a container back to New Zealand. Finally with just a week to spare before we left I had finished at the office and could focus my time on getting things ready at home. I was working on the principle of focusing first on the kingdom of God and all the other things will fall into place. Only this time I realised I had blown it. The time factor was going to be tight to say the least.
Then we heard that the state electricity corporation (PLN) were planning rolling power outages across the city. One half of the city would be without power while the other half would have power. Surprise Ian and Tania, you will be without power on Monday but will have it Tuesday night, be without it Wednesday night and so on. Now that had really thrown a spanner in the works. We were not going to get our sorting done in time if we lost two nights to work at a crucial time. We decided to just get into the task and leave the outcome to God. Monday night we were expecting the power to go out but just kept working until it did. Strangely our power stayed on all night. I said to Tania, clearly they have allowed us power tonight but tomorrow night (Tuesday) we wont have it. So we made the most of what we had on Monday night and worked late. Tuesday night came and similarly we had power so again we just worked as long as possible. Again I had it figured – the rolling outages had been postponed. Praise the Lord. Wednesday night came and again we had light so we worked again as much as possible and were making inroads into the task to be ready for Friday.
Wednesday night a couple, colleagues, dropped in to see us and find out what was going on. Why was it we had power when all this side of the city was in darkness? How then was it possible that only our house had power in all this side of the city. They had driven over from the other side of the city where they lived and sure enough, in accord with the PLN plan, this side of the city was in darkness. I said I didn’t know but what I did know is that we had power and we were making the most of it. I told them how I figured PLN had changed their plan and clearly this half of the city had power Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Our friends told us that was not possible. They had venture into our half of the city on Monday night and found it in darkness. PLN had followed the plan as notified. Our friends invited us outside to look at our street and sure enough the street was in darkness except for our house. How did I explain it? I didn’t know how but I realised that God had given us the time of light that we needed. Another Ian and Tania God story.