A Light in a Dark night

I will never forget that night. It was dark, windy and stormy. I should have never attempted to navigate the river and the lake in a small motor boat but hey, we all do stupid things.

It all started out in a very positive way. I was a youth leader in a small town in Sweden beside the largest lake in the country. Lake Vännern is no small lake. It is around 45 miles wide and 160 miles wide. I decided to take the youth group on a canoe trip with an overnighter along the coast of the lake. We started off doing well we had canoes and one small motor boat with supplies. The weather was not the best but it was not raining and there were no waves in the lake. We started off from a park in the after and paddled down the coast a ways. We found a good camping place and took a swim and set up camp. We got the tents up and we fixed our food and that was when I discovered the bad news...


I had packed the evening meal for that night and the lunch meal or the next day but I had not packed breakfast. I stood there as the first rain began to fall and I wondered what to do. I really didn’t feel like waking up a lot of hungry teenagers the next morning and telling them we had a canoe trip ahead of us and no breakfast. So what do I do? Well I talked with a few of my youth leaders and decided I would take the motor boat with one other leader and travel back to where we had been staying and pick up what I could and hopefully make it back quickly. The other leaders I knew I could trust to keep all things going and while I was gone and could get the teenagers to bed in time so that they would not be too difficult to wake up the next morning.

We started off with the thought that this would be a quick and simple trip. This was in late June, early August which meant that the late night sun was not as much a factor anymore, it was beginning to get dark and a storm had begun. There were swells in the lake now and it was not easy to navigate. In the last light of the evening we made it back to where we had been staying along a river that fed into the lake. We quickly left the boat and got all our supplies, and it was only when we got back to the boat that I realized that we were in trouble. It was dark now and the storm had not let up. I now had to drive through a small part of a river and then find a group of teenagers along the coast of a very large lake in the dark. All we had in terms of light was a small flash light.

Yes I know, it was crazy, and as I look back at it I should have never left camp and I should simply have told the teenagers the next morning that there was no breakfast and put up with sour faces etc… But I felt I had no choice now so we started off. There were rocks along the coast of the river and the lake, it was very difficult to even get out of the river with out running into the side of the river. When we got out into the lake there were white crests on the waves made by the wind in the storm. We couldn’t see much at all. It was dark, windy and wet but we had to find the teenagers, or at least we thought we had too. We came to an entrance into a large bay where we thought we might have set up camp. It was so dark and remembering there were large rocks there, I turned off the motor and rowed the boat between the rocks. I couldn’t see very much at all. Once I even closed my eyes as I was rowing and just listened to the waves hitting the rocks on both sides of me. One other factor that put fear in my heart was that the boat was not mine and I sure didn’t want to put a whole in it.

Once we stopped along the coast thinking we were in the right place and started walking into the forest thinking we would hear the teenagers. But soon we realized if we didn’t turn around we would be lost in the woods instead of the lake. So we went back to the boat and drove farther along the coast. Finally we decided to stop. We realized we were beaten. We called out a number of times to the teenagers hoping someone would hear our voice and shout back telling us we were close, but we had no such luck. There we sat in a boat off the coast in a large bay in the dark with breakfast for the next morning but no teenagers to be found.

It was when we had just given up and decided that we would have to sit in the boat for a few more hours until the early sun rose the next morning when a light hit our boat. It was not a big light and it was hard to tell at first where it was coming from. Right after the light hit us it poured down rain for a few minutes. We had only one poncho, so we draped it over both of us and waited for the rain to stop. Once the rain stopped we took the poncho off and the light hit our boat again. We decided we had only a few choices at that moment. We could either follow the light and see where it was coming from or sit in the boat for a few hours more and try to find our camp the next morning. We chose to paddle after the light and find out where it was coming from. As we followed the light we came closer and closer to shore and found that the light was from one of our youth leaders’ flashlight. He heard us in the boat and was waiting for us on shore. All was well with our teenagers. They had already gone to bed but there was a camp fire awaiting the two leaders that should have never been out in that boat that night.

I write about this crazy night in a boat because I can’t stop thinking about that light. It was not a big light. It was only a flash light. At the same time that lake was dark. I could see many lights in the lake but they were so far away (this lake is incredibly large and there are many light houses along it). There in the boat, when the light hit, no matter how small it was it was still a light to us that we could follow. When we followed the light we found the people we were looking for.

Now this might sound trite but I have to ask you as you a question as you read this. Have you seen a light in your darkness? You see 2,000 years ago, Jesus, speaking to a group of people that were possibly celebrating the feast of Tabernacles (this was celebrated in the evening with lights) claimed to be the light of the world. They say that at the beginning of the feast there were many lights but at the end there would be darkness. When Jesus made this claim we don’t know, but He called himself the light of the world, and then He went one step farther and he said, “ Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12). Out there on the lake in a storm on a very dark night the light that shown on us was wonderful. We followed it and it brought us to shore in the right place. The light of Christ is shining in this dark world today. We had a decision to make in that boat on that stormy night? We choose to follow the light? What will you choose?