Beacons of Salvation

Over the years, I have been interested in lighthouses, probably because Door County, Wisconsin, where I grew up, has many lighthouses around its 200-mile shoreline. There are treacherous shoals around this peninsula, and in the days of wooden ships, hundreds were lost. A great, great uncle of mine lost his ship on one of the shoals, and I’ve gone scuba-diving on many of the wrecks.

My great-grandfather was the lighthouse keeper at Cana Island lighthouse, where treacherous autumn Lake Michigan storms beat against it. My grandmother told me about her childhood days living in the lighthouse. I have always seen lighthouses as a vivid symbol of salvation, because I imagine myself in a wooden sailing ship, out in the violent frigid waves of a November Lake Michigan storm, heaving a sigh of relief upon sighting a lighthouse, and knowing exactly where I am.

In a place called Bailey’s Harbor, about halfway up the peninsula, there is a different kind of lighthouse. At the shore is a small white clapboard tower with a light in the top, just 20 feet or so off the ground. And then, set back from the shore about 200 yards is the main lighthouse. The trees are all cleared in that stretch between the two lights so that a boat off the shore can see both lights. The idea of this arrangement, called a range light, is that the captain of a boat can find not just a lighthouse, but, when he lines up those two lights, his precise location–and a safe way through the shoals.

The death and resurrection of Jesus are two beacons; one is incomplete without the other. But line them both up and you understand exactly what the purpose of Christ’s death is and the power of his resurrection. Saving sacrifice works with triumphant resurrection. God is at work on the cross and in the tomb to our benefit.

And so you know exactly where you are.

See a picture of the Bailey’s Harbor range light [click]