When you go to a new place, especially one that is poorer and rougher than your home, it is easy to see the dirt, to see the things that seem "backward" or "wrong" or "strange". It is easy to see the ugly and miss everything else.

There is no shortage of ugly here. There is the easy ugly- jumbled piles of disorganized "stuff", poor hygiene standards, yards and streets not nearly as clean as we would demand. And there is the hard ugly- defeated eyes, starving strays, children covered in scars and fresh wounds, the hungry hearts of children who don't know what it is like to hear I love you.

And its really easy to get caught up in that. But, today I was struck not by the ugliness in all its varieties but by the bits of beauty coming through the cracks. Bits of colored glass decorating window frames, giant morning glories living fully up to their name, brightly colored skirts, a young man giving up his lunch so another can eat, a little boy listening with rapt attention to a Bible story, a little girl's eyes lighting up from the simple words "you did a good job."

Every cloud has a silver lining. Every dark night has points of light. Every kind of ugly has beauty shining through the cracks. You just have to look for it. Sometimes you have to look really hard. And wow, is it worth the search!