Ideally, friendships lead us into deeper communion with each other; those we love mirror the divine reality and so draw us closer to the One they reflect. In our humanness, however, we can forget that the friend is only a reflection of God and instead invest ultimate meaning in the relationship.
Why has this Frenchman from France written his book in the United States to present to his friends today? Because loving the country and wanting to show his gratitude, he could find no better way of expressing it than in these two truths, intimately known to him [Jacques is blind] and reaching beyond all boundaries.
The first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us it is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without; Light is in us, even if we have no eyes.