Let There Be Light

Dan, my 19 year old cleaned the basement the other day. While many may not think this is a suspicious activity for a young man, my mom radar told me something was up. The basement was once an unfinished room with an old television set and boxes of “stuff” we really didn’t need but convinced ourselves to keep anyway. A few years ago my husband Keith decided to take his bonus money and create a young man cave for the high school aged boys. We ended up with a sectional sofa that realistically holds about 10 normal people or 5 high school boys, who must sit far enough apart so that they aren’t in contact with each other at all. We added two large screen televisions and a poker table. The room was a hit and accomplished the goal for which we set out…to keep the boys at our house as much as possible. We later put a ping pong table in an adjoining room and a game system. Before we realized what had happened, the basement was a full time entertainment room. We also discovered that as long as there is a high school girl between each of the boys, the sectional holds 15.

As much as I loved having the boys home more often, the basement soon became cluttered with soda cans, empty chip bags, cereal bowls, jackets and an even dozen of basketballs. (Dan’s older brother Jake never traveled anywhere without one!) Cleaning the basement usually consisted of stacking the empty pop cans on the television and shoving the empty wrappers into the seat cushion. As the older boys moved on to college and Caleb, now 15, was the only remaining boy at home, the basement continued to be the hang-out for several neighborhood kids and the dumping ground for food and drinks of all kinds. The lovely sectional has more than a few stains, the last being from a chocolate malt, spilled by a friend, which Caleb attempted to clean with a dry beach towel.

I continue to struggle to “encourage” the boys to clean up their messes without resorting to fingerprint analysis to determine the mess maker.

So…when Dan volunteered to clean, I knew it was not just a sign of benevolence. As suspected, he wanted to have a few people over. Guests began to arrive at 11:00 p.m., normal party time for young people, normal bed time for me! I am still unsure when they left because the dog doesn’t bark incessantly when people are exiting the house. What I am sure of it that the only thing that kept burglars away from the unlocked and slightly ajar front door that night, was the notion that our household never sleeps since every light and television in the house was left on. When I woke the next morning, Dan was asleep on the couch in the family room with infomercials blaring in the background and the house aglow.

His explanation was that after everyone left, he went upstairs to grab a bite to eat, intent on returning to the basement. He turned on lights as he walked around the house. “You don’t expect me to eat in the dark, do you?” When he settled on the couch to finish off his snack, he got a bit too comfortable and before he knew it, he was asleep.

It’s funny how comfortable we are in the light. Daylight seems less scary than night time. A lit house looks inviting and loving. The glow of a night light softly and safely guides us, even through dangerous sharp-toy minefields. The Bible tells us that evil keeps out of the light, finding its way through dark alleys and dark hearts. Evil is exposed in the light for what it truly is. I’m not sure that when God said “Let there be light” He meant in every room, but He did give us light to guide us, to lead us, to shine upon us and to surround us, awake or asleep.