Christmas Eve to see if they had any idea when everything would be back to normal. The news from the other end of the phone was not what I wanted to hear as the employee said it would likely be at least three more days. Three days? That meant we’d have to cancel our Christmas plans. There’d be no opening gifts by the light of the Christmas tree and no big family holiday meal. I was devastated. This was our first grandchild’s first Christmas. I’d had such big plans for our family. When a friend from my speaker’s group called to check on us, I asked her to send a message to our prayer loop to pray that the lights would come back on soon. She said she’d do that right away. I started getting phone calls from those dear ladies, telling me they were praying. Forty-five minutes after that prayer request went out, I heard something unusual. I opened the front door so I could listen, and then I realized it was the sound of big truck engines. Moments later, a stream of trucks from our electric company drove through the neighborhood, and an hour later, we had power

again. We had just enough time to get to the grocery store before it closed, and we returned home with a ham and everything else we needed for our big family Christmas dinner. And that night, as our loved ones gathered and we enjoyed our beautifully-lit tree in a warm house, I looked around the room with tears in my eyes— grateful beyond words for the Christmas when prayer turned the lights back on.

LH

When God Calls the Heart at Christmas — Heartfelt Devotions from Hope Valley, by Brian Bird and Michelle Cox, is inspired by the Hallmark series, “When Calls the Heart.”

43.