The poet T S Eliot wrote: ‘We thank Thee for the lights that we have kindled, The light of altar and of sanctuary; Small lights of those who meditate at midnight And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows And light reflected from the polished stone, The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco. Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward And see the light that fractures through unquiet water. We see the light but see not whence it comes. Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!’

The ancient Simeon, in the song we know as the Nunc Dimittis, proclaimed the tiny Jesus as ‘a Light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel’. That Light each of us bears in the heart.

T S Eliot again: ‘We thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow. We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding, to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of our eyes. And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made. And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light. O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!’ May God bless you this day.