It was during a children's meeting, and the speaker, a gray-haired
erstwhile schoolteacher, obviously still had a way with children. Everyone
was completely enthralled.

"Now suppose," she began, "that you went into a dark, untidy room.
What would be the first thing that you would do? The ashes are spilling out
of the grate. The table is still covered with dirty dishes. Every chair has
something lying on it or festooned over it. The windows are dirty. The
pictures are hanging crooked. Drawers are open and their rummaged contents
bulge and overflow. There is not a flat surface that is not littered. How
would you begin? Where would you start? What would be the first thing you
would do to help make that room fit to live in?"

Urgent hands shot up impulsively.

"Clear the table."

"Push the stuff back into the drawers and shut them."

"Straighten the curtains and empty the chairs."

"Clear the ashes out of the grate."

"Put away whatever's lying around."

"Sweep."

"Dust."

At last it seemed that there was nothing else they could do. They had
cleaned the grate and lighted the fire. They had cleared the table and
washed the dishes. They had made every crooked thing straight and tidied
the drawers. Everything was exactly where it should be, no litter anywhere.
They had swept and dusted. But still the gray head shook negatively. What
was the first thing that they had forgotten, without which, indeed, at
least so this wise lady said, they could neither sweep, dust, clear out
grates, make fires, nor do any other thing?

Then, as though he had been biding his time, up spoke a little fellow
from the back row.

"Turn on the light!"

Ah, now we had the right answer.

Almost indignantly his fellow listeners turned on him. As though they
could have thought of that! But they hadn't. There it was, however. They
couldn't-of course-either sweep, dust, polish, or tidy up without the
light, and the room was dark-remember?

Likewise, said the gray-haired speaker, our dark world is untidy with
greed and laziness, selfishness, hate, and anger, and the first thing we
have to do to begin putting things right is exactly the same as in that
dark, untidy room: Turn on the light.-By Mary J. Vine, Signs of the Times,
December 1960.