This past December, my Advent season was peppered with thoughts of rape. I’d been assigned to write an article on the topic for Prism, the magazine of Evangelicals for Social Action. So in between shopping for last-minute gifts, eating too much food with my family, and attending church services, I occasionally interviewed rape survivors on the phone. Or holed up in my parents’ office to research and write about this difficult topic.

And, blessedly, as I spoke with these survivors—one now a counselor to other survivors, another a filmmaker who created a documentary about rape as a weapon of war in the Congo—I began to see something very “Christmasy” indeed: light in the darkness. Hope in the midst of unthinkable pain. Redeemed bodies and lives.

Read about it all in “Breaking the Silence.” I hope these stories open your eyes and move your heart, as they did mine. And don’t miss the sidebar on ways to combat rape. Even in the midst of atrocity, we are not without hope and not without ways to fight back.