Praise the Creator of Heaven and Earth

The following is an excerpt of an essay I wrote this evening. The lightning bugs were on my parents' farm in WV. It was astounding. One evening last summer I sat out in the cool night air and watched lightning bugs. Some people call them fireflies, but West Virginians know them as lightning bugs. Wrapped in my light blanket, I watched, mesmerized, as the first blinking lights began. The bugs begin to crawl up from their grassy daytime nests, and perch on the end of tall stalks of grass. Gently they alight and flicker their greeting to the night and each other. It was a very good year for the lightning bug, and soon millions of them lit up the night. I hadn’t seen so many lightning bugs in my lifetime. When I was a child, I captured the glowing bugs in jars, removing their lights to smear on my bike wheels. The glowing wheels would flash through the dark as my brother and I sped around the yard. But this night was more amazing than any other. My parents retired inside, but I couldn’t leave the outdoors. I was in a trance. Pulled from my seat, I drifted into the front yard to see if the view there were any different. If anything, it was more astounding. From the yard, I was carried by the quiet beauty of the night past the new barn and into the pasture near the pond. As each new flash of light burst into brightness, another light would extinguish. Fireworks could not have been choreographed any better. Flashes to my right would flicker higher and higher, until the left would blaze forth in its own abundance of light. The answering glow of lightning bugs calling to one another left me breathless with excitement. As the night grew late, the light show ended. I watched as the blinking glows slowly gave way to the darkness and quiet of the cool summer air. I knew what I had witnessed was a production of immense proportions. Better than any movie or concert’s special effects, this was the lightning bugs’ praise to their Creator. The rocks had shouted forth, and the lightning bugs had echoed with their soundless worship.