Resetting the Lights

Sister Sharon Eubank's talk, Christ: The Light That Shines in Darkness, begins by sharing a story of an evening when she looked out toward the Salt Lake City Temple. Normally, the lights of the Temple come on immediately at dusk, but on this particular evening, they hadn't, and Sister Eubank couldn't see the spires of the Temple in the place she knew they should be. This experience reminded her of our need for spiritual light, and it made me wonder what we should do when it goes out.

In real life, the Temple Facilities Manager sent his staff out to turn the lights on manually, then they replaced the batteries in the automatic power supply and tested to system to find out what had failed. Similarly, when we find that our spiritual lights have grown dim or gone out, we should manually reset them through prayer, scripture study, etc. and make a thorough examination of our lives to find out what had gone wrong.

Sometimes, reseting the lights takes more than one person's efforts. Sometimes, we need help from ministering brothers or sisters and/or church leaders to help bring the lights back on and repair the mechanisms that are meant to keep them on. There's no shame in this; everyone needs help from time to time. That's part of the reason why this church organization even exists: so we can help each other. This means both helping others when we can and getting help when we should. The Temple Facilities Manager didn't get all the lights back on all by himself, even though, given enough time, he probably could have. He called in the help he needed to get the lights back on as quickly as possible. Just as the Temple Facilities Manager was willing to ask for help when he needed it, so should we.

Knowing that spiritual light is necessary for our spiritual progress, Satan does everything in his power to cut off our access to that light, and sometimes he succeeds, at least partially. When our light dims or goes out, we shouldn't despair; that's just what the adversary wants us to do. Instead, we should try to reset our spiritual light as soon as possible, even calling in help if we feel like we could use it, and thoroughly check ourselves to find out what had gone wrong, how we can fix it, and what we can do to prevent that part from breaking in the future. Of course, this isn't always easy. Satan tries to make it as hard as possible. But no matter how or why the lights have gone out, God always provides a way for us to bring them back on. God will not leave us in darkness forever. Not so long as we keep doing what we can to reset the lights.