Recently, I was doing research for an article for work when I came across this image.

It is early morning on the streets of Beirut, Lebanon. Apartment complexes, strewn with drying clothes, makeshift air conditioning units, and a mishmash of curtains, fill every conceivable space. Refugee families, 250,000 of them to be exact, fleeing the Syrian wars, fill such apartments, barely eking out a living amid the bustling city.

Then—one lone light.

In the middle of the drab gray, that single shop light illuminates the entire photo. Unexplainable perhaps, but there is something about light that attracts, brings hope, comforts. We experience it when come home after a long, hard day at work and see lights in the house, the promise of a warm dinner on the table. I experienced it when I found a single string of old Christmas lights transformed my basement room into home.

We live in a dark world. Around us, men and women blindly stagger about, groping for meaning and life amid sin, destruction, and despair. Christmas morning, the light appeared. The Light of the World, still an infant, penetrated the cold darkness, and ever since, a steady stream of those seeking light have seen and come and remained.

Like that lone shop light in the bleak dawn, let us relish the reality of a grace great enough to offer light amid our darkness, hope in our despair, and vision in our blindness.