The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

Margaret Knott grew up in the Bass Harbor Head Light on the rocky coast of Maine, where her father kept the lamp burning from 1895 to 1923. She later wrote that she never once needed a posted list of rules to know how to behave in that lighthouse. The light itself taught her.

When fog rolled across Frenchman Bay and fishing boats groped blindly toward the rocks, Margaret understood why her father polished the Fresnel lens until his hands ached. When she heard the grateful shouts of sailors who found safe harbor, she understood why he never let the flame go out — not once in twenty-eight years. The light did not bark orders at her. It did not shame her into obedience. It simply showed her what mattered, and she arranged her life around its glow.

Paul tells Titus that the grace of God has appeared — not as a rulebook, not as a taskmaster, but as a light. And that light teaches us. It trains us to say no to what would wreck us on the rocks and yes to what is self-controlled, upright, and godly. Grace does not merely rescue us from the storm. It moves into the lighthouse with us, polishes the lens beside us, and slowly, patiently reshapes us into keepers of the flame ourselves.

The light does not force. It reveals. And once you have seen what it shows you, you can never live in the dark the same way again.