620 million people were in the dark recently. Electricity grids collapsed across India leaving half the country without power in the world's biggest black out. Nobody seems to know how many dogs were in the dark as a result of this catastrophe, but none of them seemed particularly bothered. It was only the people who complained.

Of course, for thousands of years people survived without electricity. But still people were constantly looking for ways to generate some light. The dogs never worried. Whether there was no light, or the lights went out, they just settled down for the night without complaint.

The Indian author Vishal Mangalwadi wrote, "Am I different from dogs? Could it be that I make light - though my dog doesn't - because I am made in the image of someone who created light?" [The Book that Made your World, p.48]. Dogs accept whatever is (like darkness); but human beings imagine what could be or what ought to be. That's why we try to change things and why we get frustrated with what simply is, when there should be something better. We can invent candles and light bulbs, because we can imagine something other than inevitable darkness.

This is surely one of the clear evidences that we are not simply part of nature, part of what is. People transcend nature, and can alter nature (for good or bad). We are creative in our ability to imagine possibilities, our ability to think outside the black box of powerless darkness. Part of what simply is is the existence of a Creator who is faintly seen in the humanity whom he has created for the purpose of displaying his glory in his tiny mirror images who populate our globe like billions of little light bulbs.

When, at the beginning of time, there was a cosmic power outage and darkness covered the embryonic creation, God said, "Let there be light." And when the lights came on, he said that was good. So it is natural for men made in the image of God to say "That's bad!" when the lights go out. And natural for them to want to do something about it.

But as believers, we are, in Christ, being re-created in the image of God, made more and more like the one who is called the Light of the World. There are a lot more than 620 million people living in the dark. Spiritual, moral, social, economic, educational, political darkness. We have been given the capacity to not simply accept the darkness as it is - which is the appropriate response of dogs. We can imagine with eyes of faith what the world might be, what it should be. And by the Spirit we can let our light shine. If I truly am different from a dog, as Mangalwadi concluded, I have to do something about the darkness.