I have read about a blackout that took place on July 13, 1977 and it affected most of New York City. It was triggered when a lightning strike hit a substation near the Hudson River, initiating a cascade of failures in the power grid. The blackout lasted more than 24 hours in many places, with full restoration stretching into the next day.
What makes this blackout unique in memory is that, because the moon was only a thin crescent that night, the skies were unusually dark. That allowed even city dwellers, under heavy light pollution, to see deep-sky objects, Stars, constellations, and those who had access to a telescope they could see the Milky Way and other celestial details which were rarely visible from midtown Manhattan otherwise.
So, the poetic claim that ‘when city lights went out, the heavens turned on’ has a real-world footing: that 1977 blackout was one of the few times in modern urban life where city-dwellers could peer into the cosmos as though they were under a dark rural sky.
That’s what Saint Paul is describing in today’s passage from Romans. He’s writing to a people dazzled by the wrong kind of light, bright, loud, artificial. “They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images,” he says. They lost the stars because they lit their own fires. The tragedy of sin, Paul insists, is not that we stop believing in God, it’s that we stop needing Him.
Paul’s letter is not a scolding; it is an x-ray. He’s looking at the human heart when it disconnects from its power source. We keep moving, working, producing, but the inner current fades. The lights are on outside, but the soul is dark.
There is a beautiful legend of a church in Austria built without windows. The architect designed it so that only candles carried by the faithful would light it. When people gathered to worship, the whole church would glow. When they left, they took their candles home, leaving it dark again, because the church’s light depended on their presence. That image captures Paul’s message perfectly. God’s light is meant to shine through us. When we turn from Him, creation goes dim.
Paul’s words sting because they are not about pagans; they’re about us. We still worship, just in new temples. We kneel before success, comfort, and certainty. We light our own small lamps, convinced we can outshine the sun. But like the blackout in New York, sometimes God allows our artificial lights to fail, so we can see what’s real again.
Think of the prophet Elijah. He ran from danger and hid in a cave, exhausted and afraid. He expected God in the wind, the earthquake, the fire, but God came instead in a ‘still, small voice.’ When Elijah stopped chasing the noise, he found the Presence. The same holds true for us. God rarely competes with our neon distractions; He waits until the batteries run out.
I once met a woman who lost her sight in middle age. When I asked how she coped, she said something I’ll never forget: ‘Father, I lost my eyesight, but not my vision.’ She meant that her heart saw more clearly once her eyes could no longer distract her. That’s the paradox Paul is teaching: when we stop worshiping created things, we begin to see creation, glowing with the presence of its Maker.
So perhaps the next time the lights go out, whether in the city or in your own soul, don’t panic. Look up. To rediscover the beautiful night sky of faith, the one that only appears when the world’s light fades. Because sometimes God has to dim our little lamps so that we can finally see His stars. When the false lights fade, that’s when the true Light begins to shine.