Shine a Little Light

Essential Things

During my only deployment to Afghanistan, I arrived at Bagram Airfield expecting to spend the night before continuing on to my destination.

I was tired from travel, anxious about what lay ahead, and eager to finally get where I was supposed to be. Heidi, my Religious Program Specialist, was with me. She would become my teammate through thick and thin during that deployment. We were both exhausted, excited, and ready to get to work. Heidi was a pistol. She never seemed to travel light and appeared to be carrying enough weapons in her cases to win the war herself.

A Navy SEAL who had traveled with us told us to wait. He made a phone call. A short time later, a helicopter appeared.

To this day, I suspect I was never really supposed to see that helicopter, much less fly on it.

An hour later we were crossing Afghanistan under the cover of darkness.

It was my first time flying at night in a combat zone. Looking out the window, I could make out little beyond darkness. Occasionally the terrain emerged below us before disappearing again. We were flying low enough that I occasionally found myself wondering whether the next thing I might see would be the flash of a rocket leaving the ground. The only light visible to me came from the green glow of the pilots’ night vision goggles and the faint hint of the moon.

Eventually we landed at Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan, on a completely darkened airfield. I remember dragging my bags through the darkness, exhausted and disoriented. I remember being welcomed by people I had not yet met. Most of all, I remember the relief of finally being where I was supposed to be.

I was home.

Not home in the usual sense. Home to my unit. Home to my mission. Home to the place where I belonged.

Years later, I found myself thinking about that flight. There had to be lights guiding us to that landing. Infrared markers perhaps. Signals visible through the pilots’ night vision goggles but invisible to me. The lights were there all along. I simply lacked the ability to see them.

For years I have returned to the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

“One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”

I first encountered those words as a child and have returned to them throughout my life. On a recent trip to Paris, I purchased a special edition of The Little Prince, a reminder that some companions travel with us for a lifetime.

What continues to draw me back is not merely the beauty of the sentence. It is the truth of it.

Again and again I have discovered that the most important things in life are often the things least visible to the eye. Worth. Hope. Love. Grief. Human dignity. The image of God.

Several years ago, a Marine called me.

We had met during a deployment that had shaken the world. Years had passed since we last spoke, but he still had my number and remembered that I had once told him to call if he ever needed to talk.

One day he did.

For nearly four hours he talked.

What struck me was not the event itself but what the event was doing in his psyche.

During the deployment he had taken an action exactly as he had been trained to do. The outcome was not what anyone anticipated. At the center of the story was a child.

Years later, he still saw her.

The image had never really left him.

He could not sleep. He could not rest. Again and again he returned to the same moment, examining it from every possible angle and searching for certainty that never came.

For years he had been struggling with his worth and what he understood to be an unforgivable sin. As I listened, I found myself hearing something deeper than a Marine recounting a painful memory. I heard a soul trapped inside a single moment, searching for a way to understand himself, his actions, and whether forgiveness remained possible.

The facts had not changed in years. What he was searching for was a way to live with them.

Over time, the memory became the lens through which he judged himself and his life. The image remained so vivid that it obscured other truths, including two of the most essential: his worth and his hope.

I do not know what happened after we hung up. I do not know whether he ever found the certainty he was seeking. I do not know whether he ultimately found peace.

What I do know is that for nearly four hours he did not carry the burden alone.

As I listened, I began to perceive his call not simply as a search for answers, but as a soul searching for forgiveness. Not only forgiveness from God, but the possibility of forgiving himself.

Listening to him, I found myself thinking about how often the most important truths in our lives remain hidden from us.

As a teenager, I learned to develop photographs in a darkroom. I enjoyed the craft of it. As an awkward kid, it was something that felt uniquely mine, a skill few of my friends understood and fewer still knew how to do.

What I remember most, however, is the smell of the developer and the quiet of the darkroom itself. There was something safe about that space. Away from the noise and expectations of the world, I could focus on the image in front of me.

A blank sheet of paper would slide into the developer tray and slowly reveal what had been hidden from view.

The image was not being created.

It was already there.

Processing simply revealed it.

Over the years I have come to believe that people are much the same.

During the COVID pandemic, a young Marine came to us with an impossible situation. She had COVID. Her profoundly disabled brother had COVID. Her parents had been hospitalized with COVID and were unable to provide the care he required. She was the only available caregiver, yet a standing policy prohibited travel for personnel who tested positive.

I remember sitting in discussions focused on the policy. The policy mattered. It existed for good reasons. Yet the longer the conversation continued, the more convinced I became that we were discussing a policy while overlooking a person.

What I saw was not a COVID-positive Marine requesting travel.

I saw a daughter.

I saw a sister.

I saw the only available caregiver for a vulnerable human being.

Eventually she was allowed to travel and went home to care for her brother because there was no one else to do it.

Everyone involved had COVID. The letter of the law did not apply to this situation.

Some in the room saw a policy.

I saw a person.

Much of ministry feels like that.

People often arrive carrying stories, wounds, fears, failures, and hopes that remain invisible to everyone around them. Institutions see policies. Organizations see processes. Human beings often see only what is immediately in front of them.

Yet beneath all of that lies a deeper reality.

Christians call it Imago Dei—the image of God.

We believe it is written into every human life. It remains present beneath success and failure, beneath shame and accomplishment, beneath the stories we tell ourselves and the labels others place upon us.

It remains even when we can no longer see it in ourselves.

Human beings possess a remarkable capacity to overlook what is most essential. Yet our failure to perceive something does not negate its reality.

Truth remains true whether we recognize it or not.

Dignity remains present whether we acknowledge it or not.

Hope remains possible even when we can no longer see it.

Perhaps that is what Saint-Exupéry understood.

Perhaps it is also what John was trying to tell us.

When Jesus declares, “I am the Light of the World,” I do not hear merely a promise of comfort. I hear a promise of revelation.

The Light reveals reality.

The infrared markers did not create the runway. They revealed it.

The darkroom light did not create the image. It revealed it.

A difficult conversation did not create a Marine’s worth or his hope. It helped reveal truths that had been obscured by a single moment.

The Light does not create dignity.

It reveals dignity.

The Light does not invent truth.

It reveals truth.

The Light does not create the image of God.

It reveals what was there all along.

Even when we cannot see God, feel God, or hear God, God remains. The limits of our perception do not diminish the reality of God’s presence.

The light shines in the darkness.

And reality remains what it has always been, waiting to be revealed.