Abandoned Lighthouse

Castine, Maine, is one of the most picturesque little towns I have ever seen. Every house is old, or is designed to look old, and white – just white, with maybe some gray or black shutters around the windows. Elm trees grow there. Huge, beautiful, hundreds of years old, they have been destroyed everywhere else in the Eastern United States except on the little peninsula where the hamlet of Castine is found.

At the very end of the land, before it becomes the Atlantic Ocean, is Dyce Head Lighthouse. It’s still there, standing strong against the winds and ravages of time. The keeper’s house is a private home now, and the light has long since been abandoned. There’s an automated light somewhere down the coast and Dyce Head Lighthouse can only be viewed from the sea, or at the end of a  barely used trail (I walked it down to the sea) which begins at the end of an old road.

Although we don’t really need the lighthouses along the coast anymore, some of them continue to light the night and pierce the fog, and we can pretend they save ships now and again.

There is a parallel thought that comes to mind. All across this Nation, in your city or town or village, there is a lighthouse. We call them Churches. They are designed to reach out through the black night of sin and bring the light of our Savior to perishing men. But for many, the light has been abandon, extinguished by failure to clearly and accurately proclaim the Truth, to hold forth the revealed Word of God, and to bring the light of salvation to men lost on a sea of sin. Some think we don’t need the “light” anymore. It has become extraneous to our way of living and thinking. We have moved beyond the narrowness of Truth and broadened our thinking to include that which is not light at all.

I am sad about the loss of both lighthouses – Dyce Head and the one near you.