“It’s a lamp unto your feet and a light for your path,” Lori said as I stepped out the back door into the early morning’s darkness.
I carry a flashlight with me when I walk before sunrise. It’s no ordinary, puny flashlight. It’s more like a robust baton, heavy-duty enough to use as a defensive weapon. Lori got it for me because she worries about my pre-dawn walks.
At first, I resisted the idea of carrying a flashlight. Then she asked, “What if something attacks you?” She followed the question with a warning, “You know how we’ve heard coyotes howling in the field behind the house.”
I’m not concerned about a hungry coyote or rabid skunk attacking me on our street, and I’m on friendly terms with the occasional barking dog.
As I venture closer to the highway, cars become the more dangerous beasts. Hurried drivers, perhaps on cell phones or unaware of my presence, pose more of a threat in the morning darkness than roaming coyotes or stranger-danger-sensitive dogs.
The fog wrapped its wet arms around me, obscuring my vision, magnifying the night’s stillness, and seeming to amplify every minuscule sound as I crunched along our road. But I had my protective flashlight at my side, and Lori’s allusion to Psalm 119:105 (“the lamp to my feet, the light of my path”) echoed in my ears.
I thought of Dr. Giles Fort, the legendary physician to Zimbabwe, Africa. When my father, a dentist, served there (It was still Rhodesia then), I was a budding youth, a 7th grader, in awe of Dr. Fort—the man who had started the Baptist mission there long before we arrived. Dr. Fort still made his rounds at Sanyati Baptist Hospital in Dr. Albert Schweitzer-like fashion, complete with a pith helmet and khaki pants.
“Come along, David,” I can hear him say. “I’m making evening rounds. You can walk with me.”
And I would tag along, hanging on his every word as he spoke tenderly to his patients, many of whom had journeyed on foot for days in the African bush to get to Sanyati.
Although it was a short distance home, I was skittish as we walked along the trail, with tall grass on each side. I could hear the critters scurrying in the grass on either side of us, motivating me to pick up the pace and stay closer to Dr. Fort, thankful for him and the big flashlight he carried by his side.
“Don’t worry, David,” he would reassure me. “They won’t hurt us. They’re just common African bush snakes.”
I edged even closer to his side and his flashlight.
God’s Word is the true lamp unto my feet and light for my path, shining the way and making clear the journey of faithfulness to God in a world enveloped in darkness—summer, fall, winter, and spring.
But whether in Zimbabwe, Africa, or Central Kentucky, a good ol’ high-powered flashlight in the early morning or late night darkness sure is comforting.