The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

It’s a line from the Gospel of John which I used in a recent address to a church who had invited me to discuss what I recently witnessed of the Mediterranean refugee crisis.

It’s a line which goes beyond any and all faiths and is strikingly relevant in recent weeks.

The darkness which recently came to Manchester and London did so in the shape of men so driven by hatred, so lacking in humanity that they slaughtered children leaving a pop concert and people enjoying an after work drink.

And the darkness came again in the Mediterranean at the end of May, when 34 refugees, mostly babies and toddlers, drowned trying to reach Europe.

But in the darkness there is always light. In Manchester and London it was those who ran into the danger.

Not only the emergency services who stand ready to do so every day but passers-by, parents who ensured their own children were safe before going back for children they did not know but who needed them at that moment.

The light was Chris Parker, the homeless man, floored by the Manchester blast but whose efforts to save the injured have seen offers flood in to help him find a home.

And I’ve seen for myself the light in the Mediterranean. The wonderful people at Mediterranean Hope who moved to Lampedusa four years ago to support arriving refugees; the tiny Methodist community in Scicli, Sicily, whose House of Cultures is a safe and loving home for more women and children at any one time than there are in their own congregation; and the charities operating their own rescue ships, filling gaps left by European governments to save as many lives as they can in that vast expanse of water.

Our words may not do justice to the horrors but together with our actions, they can defeat those who seek to destroy who we are.

In light of these tragedies we are again calling on the UK Government to take in unaccompanied refugee children. They need the love and safety we can offer them.

There is a wider policy response to the atrocities in Manchester and London and the disaster in the Mediterranean.

In the coming months we must discuss it but for now we can deliver a powerful, unified message; we will not be defeated by terror, we will not stand idly by as others suffer.

We will be the light in the darkness.