Frederick Buechner tells in one of his sermons about some useful advice he once received from a young ship's officer aboard a British freighter. It was night; the ship was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and the officer had been peering into the darkness, looking for the lights of the other ships. He told Buechner that the way to see lights on the horizon is not to look straight at the horizon, but to look just above the horizon. You can see the lights better, he told Buechner, when you do not try to look at them directly. "Since then," writes Buechner, "I have learned that it is also the way to see other things."

Just so, Luke moves our gaze from the light on the horizon to the places just above, below, and off to one side. We are told of the light which filled the world that night, but we do not really see it. We see instead the reflection of that light on the faces and in the hearts of those who were present.