Let your light so shine before men......

"Ye are the light of the world." (Matthew 5:14)
"Let your light so shine before men, . . ." (Matthew 5:16)

Twenty-two planes from a naval air station were aloft at dusk participating in manoeuvres when the fog swept in unexpectedly. Eight of them raced immediately to landing fields, but the others were caught in a swiftly forming impenetrable blanket. Four planes crashed, one of them bursting into flames, as twelve pilots dived blindly through the fog.
Two hours later only two planes were aloft. Suddenly there went out over the radio this message, "all automobile owners go to the field outside the city. Two fliers are lost in the fog and you are going to help them to land." Soon the roads approaching the field were crowded with cars creeping through the inky blackness, hardly able to see with their feeble lights. As the cars arrived the authorities lined them up with the cars facing inward around the field. More than 2500 completely surrounded the landing strip. The word was passed around, "All lights on!"
The lights on no single car made much impression upon that night and fog, but the lights of 2500 of them lighted the field so brightly that a transport pilot could go aloft and guide the two aviators down to safety.

Oh, let it not in any port be said
By watchful pilots that some light of thine
Failed on a certain stormy night to shine
Beside the harbor head.

Life's seamen, by whatever coast they fare,
Call out to one another passing by;
"Trim, firm the lamps, raise every beacon light.
There are no lights to spare." (Frank Walcott Hutt)

(Streams in the Desert - Vol. 2)