ONE OF MY favorite church Christmas moments is the end of the Christmas Eve candlelight service. We sing “Silent Night” as the lights are dimmed and light our own candles in turn, starting with the main Advent candle on the stage. The way the collective flickering light grows brighter as one candle lights another is a sweet symbol of the gospel—our own small lights together brightening the world around us.

But I most remember singing the famous carol in a rather different setting—outside a porno theater in Amsterdam. I lived in the Dutch city for several years while working with a missionary organization there. While most of my work was in the communications office, on occasions I’d get to join with others in the group whose ministry focus was the infamous red-light district.

Some of them lived in the neighborhood renowned for its liberal attitudes toward open drug use and prostitution—one of the ministry centers was adjoined by a satanist church on one side and a brothel on the other—where they ran a coffee bar and sought to befriend people by just going about their daily lives. This was ministry of incarnation (“we’re here to stay”), not incursion (“we have come to visit”).

I joined them for their annual carol-singing tour of the neighborhood, when we set out with bags of homemade cookies. We handed them to the scantily clad women sitting in their glass-front sex-for-sale booths. At one point, we stopped to sing outside one of the many porno cinemas.

The front doors were open, and behind the ticket counter was a small video projector, screening teasing clips to passersby of what was on offer inside. I handed a bag of cookies to the bored-looking man behind the counter, and then to his small son, who was playing with a toy truck on the carpet in the foyer.

I have often wondered about that boy in the years since—he’s old enough to have children of his own now. I’m curious whether hearing “Silent Night” stirs any memories, and if so, what they are. The holy infant came for both him and his father—those who don’t know any different and those who don’t know any better.

In making their home among those lost to sex, drugs, and addiction, and sharing something of the sweetness of Christmas, those Amsterdam missionaries were embodying Jesus. His first living breaths were in the muck and mess of the stable, and with his last breath He made a way for us to rise above all that weighs us down.

For just a moment, I believe, there was a flicker of the “love’s pure light” of “Silent Night”’ and its glories that “stream from heaven afar.”