Son of God, Love's True Light

In a narrow canyon in Norway, a little village didn't get a whole lot of sunlight. But one day that changed.

As anyone who's lived through an extended power failure knows, light is a resource most of us take for granted until it's unexpectedly absent. When a blown transformer takes down our little corner of the power grid, sunset imposes a darkness so deep it weighs heavily on the soul. We learn anew how welcome is the dawn.

Now, imagine going without a sunrise for half the year! Imagine living in a sort of shadowland, in which dawn is but a distant dream. Noonday in such a place is not much brighter than twilight elsewhere.

Such was the daily lot of the remote Norwegian village of Rjukan, west of Oslo, in the mountainous interior of that wintry land. Rjukan is situated at the bottom of a narrow river valley, hedged by steep mountain slopes.

There never would have been a village in that shadowed place at all, were it not for the river. In the early 20th century, an industrialist named Samuel Eyde was seeking cheap hydroelectric power for a new fertilizer plant. Rjukan's location suited his...