The Midnight Drive to Safety

In 2017, a young father named Ahmad gathered his wife and two small children in the darkness of their Aleppo apartment. Neighbors had whispered that their street was next. There was no time to pack photo albums or wedding dishes — just water, documents, and whatever bread remained. By 3 a.m., they were walking north through rubble-strewn roads, Ahmad carrying his sleeping daughter against his chest, shielding her face from the cold.

They spent nineteen months in a Turkish refugee camp before resettlement brought them to a small apartment in Nashville. Ahmad, who had been an engineer, took work washing dishes. His wife learned English from children's television. They were alive, and that was enough.

Joseph knew that kind of midnight urgency. When the angel spoke, he did not wait for morning. He did not ask for a detailed itinerary or a guaranteed return date. He wrapped up his young family and walked into the Egyptian dark because staying meant death. The Son of God entered this world not in triumph but as a refugee infant, smuggled across a border under cover of night.

Every family that has ever fled violence in the dark — clutching children, leaving everything — walks in the footsteps of the Holy Family. And the God who guided Joseph through that terrifying passage is the same El Roi, the God Who Sees, who watches over every desperate journey toward safety. No refugee is invisible to Him.