A Visit with the Joneses

Carol Jones Saint: Hello, hello there. Come right in to enjoy a special time of family devotions at home sweet home. It's so great to have you stop by that we could just share some of the good things of the Lord together. We're planning some very special songs for you and scripture verses. We want you to just sit down and be at home and just enjoy singing right along. Now, as the trio is already starting to sing in the living room, we want you to join right in with this special song.

Bert Jones: I would like to get hundreds and hundreds of copies of that into the hands of our radio listeners. I'd like you to be singing it, I'd like you to be learning it, and I'd like you to be making it your prayer. As written by Mother Jones many years ago, "Lord, help me to be a lighthouse for Thee."

Carol Jones Saint: And we would be happy to send you a free copy of the song "The Lightkeeper's Prayer," if you would ask for it when you write. We hope that you'll mention something about the name of the song, because in the office, it's a little bit hard when you just say "send me the song."

If you say "The Lightkeeper's Prayer" or something about the lighthouse, we'll know what you mean. The address is A Visit with the Joneses Incorporated, or The Jones Family, Box 575, Erie, Pennsylvania 16512.

Bert Jones: What can be more beautiful on a sunlit day with the blue sky and big, white billowing clouds than to look at a lighthouse standing by the seacoast? No wonder lighthouses are the favorite photographs. No wonder lighthouses are some of the favorite paintings that people hang in their homes. What a beautiful scene!

Carol Jones Saint: And you know, if you could stay sometime a little bit longer, we've really made a collection through the years just from magazines and pictures that we've taken ourselves. Of course, Bert, our very choice lighthouse is the one right here in the living room painted by you. Which lighthouse is that?

Bert Jones: This painting we have here in the living room is of the Portland Head Light at Portland, Maine. After we had visited there many years ago as a family, I made sketches and we took photographs, and I came home and made this oil painting. We enjoy it very much. It's like a window on the world, a window to Portland.

Carol Jones Saint: It's so interesting to notice as you look at the pictures, the photographs, or paintings, that each lighthouse, no matter where you go, is a little bit different. The top of the lighthouse is different, the structure of the base of the lighthouse is different, and it makes a very interesting study.

Bert Jones: This particular lighthouse, Portland Head Light at Portland, Maine, was erected in 1791. 1791, it's an old, old lighthouse. It was in place before George Washington died. One of the first acts of Congress in the year 1789 was to found the Lighthouse Service and the Coast Guard.

In August of 1989, the Lighthouse Service observed its 200th anniversary. That was a very special occasion. It's cause for great rejoicing that for some 200 years, the Lighthouse Service has been in service in our nation and actually serving all the ships of the world.

The lighthouse at Portland, Maine, then, you see, was erected just two years after Congress said we want to have a Lighthouse Service. There are still some 450 lighthouses operating in the United States. At every seashore and every seacoast, the lighthouses are very important. As I said, they are very, very beautiful.

The reason Congress felt it was important that we have lighthouses erected was that a lighthouse is needed not on a sunny day, but far more on a stormy night. When it's dark, when guidance is needed. Even today, a recent article I read says that lighthouses are still among the most valuable navigational aids that sailors have.

The lighthouses are universally appealing, but they are very, very necessary. Therefore, you see, as Mother, remembering the words of Jesus, "Ye are the light of the world, let your light shine. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

She had the concept that each of us as Christians should be a shining lighthouse, letting the light of Jesus shine forth from our lives. The purpose of a lighthouse as given in the encyclopedia, I learned this many years ago, is a fourfold purpose. Let me repeat those purposes.

A lighthouse has the purpose of guiding. That's why we have a light. There may be slight variations in that light and how it blinks so that it becomes a guiding light. Here at Erie, the lighthouse shines out almost 200 miles at sea, it can be seen.

Whenever the ships coming from Buffalo or going toward Cleveland see that light, they know that is Erie. They know by that blink of that particular light that that is Erie. It is a guiding light. If a ship is looking for the port of Erie, they can come into port. If they're looking for Chicago, they can come into Chicago, or Buffalo.

If they go too many miles and have not seen the light, then they know somehow they might be off the course. A very important purpose of a lighthouse is to guide. Also, the purpose of a lighthouse is to warn. A lighthouse usually stands on a rocky coast where there is a rocky shoal and where there are sandbars that present danger.

It warns the ships coming in that there is potential danger. Therefore, be careful. The warning light is so crucial and such an important purpose. To guide, to warn, to help. It stands there saying, we will help you. Is your ship needing navigational help? Are your motors worn out, or are your sails tattered and torn? We can help you or find help for you.

Then a fourth purpose of the lighthouse is actually to save. They were lifesaving stations for there were human beings at the lighthouses who could send out lifeboats or throw life belts to rescue those who were tossed along the seacoast and shipwrecked.

In like manner, as Mother said, "Lord, help me to be a lighthouse for Thee," she was saying that you and I are to be guiding lights, warning lights, helping lights, and saving lights as we let the light shine.

For most of the 200 years of the Lighthouse Service, the lighthouses have been manned by human beings. There have always been human beings there. Maybe just one sailor or two sailors, or some lighthouses, a whole family have lived there.

Carol Jones Saint: Yes, we have a friend whose family lived in the lighthouse and she happened to be born in the lighthouse in Erie, Pennsylvania. Sometime, maybe we'll interview her on the radio to let us know about the days when whole families lived at lighthouses.

Bert Jones: But it has been the trend within the last 10 years to begin automating the lighthouses. Some of them were very dangerous places to be. Through the use of calculators and automation, more and more lighthouses have been automated until, in the 200th anniversary week of the Lighthouse Service, the last man was taken out of service. The last human being who was manning a lighthouse was taken out of service.

But I have news for you. The Coast Guard Service and the Lighthouse Service may be run by automation today through the genius of calculators and computers. But God has no intention of releasing you and me from our God-given opportunity to be lighthouses for Jesus Christ.

God still needs human beings. Human beings who realize that they are to warn and human beings who realize that they have a purpose to guide to Jesus Christ. So many need the human touch. So many need the human help.

And then human beings who will actually lead people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. To be on hand to give the good news of the gospel. God has no intention of releasing you and me from our obligation to let the light shine.

He's not going to use automation to put us out of work. No calculator can take your place in the kingdom of God. No calculator can take your place, no computer can take your place in serving for Jesus Christ.

Well, with all of this in mind, I hope that you will now, as we change the figure of speech, see again the Lord Jesus as the lighthouse on the shore. And we as the lower lights. How good to know when one day we were drifting, drifting in the wreckage of a storm-tossed sea. How good to know there was a lighthouse on the shore.

Carol Jones Saint: What a very special joy it has been to have you visiting at home sweet home. I would like to remind you that the song that we used earlier in the program called "Lord, Help Me To Be a Lighthouse for Thee," or "The Lightkeeper's Prayer," we do have copies of the song which we would be glad to send you. A free copy of the song was written by my mother, Ruth Kai Jones, the same lady that wrote "In Times Like These."

Of course, "In Times Like These" is so well-known, but the song "The Lightkeeper's Prayer" is not as well-known, and yet it's very, very beautiful. If you would like a free copy, when you're writing, the address is Post Office Box 575, Erie, Pennsylvania, the zip code 16512.

If you would be writing a check for the ministry to help with many of the expenses, a check should be written to the legal name A Visit with the Joneses Incorporated. Gifts to the ministry are tax-deductible. This ministry is actually a lighthouse, as we've been talking about lighthouses in this time of family devotions. A lighthouse going around the world with the good news.

As we come to the close of this visit, why don't you join with the instruments as they're going to be playing a song you don't hear very often these days, "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning." It fits right in with our theme of letting your light shine. You sing right along. Until the next time, goodbye.