John 8:12 NIV
Then spoke Jesus
again to them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that follows me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
Over the years we get muddled and mixed up. Our visions become so focused on one thing we
lose track of the big picture. Special
interests, stats, mind narrowing opinions with blinders to see or even
deafening ourselves from listening to someone that may think a little
differently than us. As I have focused
on things, I have sometime become short-sighted into the whole of it.
Jesus walked into
that narrow vision of expectations of who the Pharisees and Jews thought the
Messiah should be. They lost sight of
the big picture that had been clearly displayed throughout the Torah that reveals
the Messiah. They were missing Him by their own narrowed views. On the flip side, some can become so inclusive of all, that they miss the truth. The ones that by majority received Christ most readily as Messiah and LORD were the
Gentiles. They didn’t have the
personally formed opinions or their own efforts in studies or time they put in. They saw the wholeness of Christ and what He
did as “God with us” because their vision was open to see I AM in the present. They were taking it all in.
This plays out even
in the physical act of reading. I can
read for a long time looking at the words on a page or on a screen and when I
look up or out my window it takes a while for my vision to adjust to see
clearly all that is there and around me.
Sometimes I am amazed at all I had missed. The sun may have set and there was only a
thread of orange still there in the
mostly darkened sky and a better part of my day had passed.
My Christian life didn’t start out in any way of Bible
study. My Christian life was more
relational. I hung out with God. I talked to Him a lot. I needed Him a lot. I noticed things in nature and saw His humor
and His heart and His power. I observed
people and I observed all that I believed that He made. I pretty much walked in His vastness.
When I did decide to really read the Bible, I would read
conversations that David had with God in the Psalms and I’d say to Him, “Hey,
we did this!” The more I understood what
it was like to really hang out and walk with God and know Him, the more other
things made sense. My vision was so much
wider. When I would read His Word it
already was easy to understand. I
recognized His voice, much like a child that reads a message from his parent. My experiences with Him were often
miraculous. I was used to this
Spirituality. It was comfortable to me. It
still is the place where I am most comfortable.
The older I have become the more I am beginning to recognize
Him in other parts of this physical world. I see the Spiritual and physical
overlap. Sciences have started to make sense to me because it matched His
design and intentions and His Word. Of
those who wrote the Bible thousands of years ago under the inspiration of His
Spirit, they write of things that man had not proven or found yet in
science. And as scientists often focus
on the science and get deeper and deeper into it over the centuries, today they
often miss the connection to the Word of God.
I’m not a scientist, nor am I a Biblical scholar. I am someone that is comfortable to say
anything to God and receptive enough to listen to Him. You could say I’m child-like.
But, as I see Him more in physical ways I am amazed. Numerous times in the Bible the LORD is
mentioned with Light and Life. Today, we
even make jokes when someone hurts themselves, but not seriously hurt, and we may say to them “stay away
from the light” as if it was the Light at the end of the tunnel where God and
heaven are as if they are about to pass from this life to the next. The Light at the end of the tunnel.
The beginning of Life and creation is often debated. As science has narrowed to the physical, it
misses a bigger vision. Science didn’t
use to be this way.
I was doing some
reading recently and I am incredibly grateful to be alive in the days of
“Google”. I was researching some science
studies on light. I came across a
lengthy document called The New Chemistry, a lecture on molecules
and Avogadro’s Law by a scientist named Josiah Parsons Cooke 1827-1894 and it included
lectures he did in Cambridge. Mr. Cooke begins saying its history has been
marked by very frequent revolutions in its theories or systems. This is
an introduction he made before he began the lecture teaching.
The courses of the
planets have not changed since they were watched by Chaldean astronomers, there
thousand years ago; but how differently have their motions been explained first
by Hipparchus and Ptolemy, then by Copernicus and Kepler, and lastly by Newton
and Avogadro. He states that I also know
that our knowledge of these laws is as yet very imperfect, and that our human
systems must be at the best, but very partial expressions of the truth. Still, it is a fact worthy of our profound
attention that in each of the physical sciences as in astronomy, the successive
great generalizations which have marked its progress have included and expanded
rather than superseded those which went before them. Through the great revolutions which have
taken place in the forms of thought, the elements of truth in successive
systems have been preserved, while the error has been constantly eliminated;
and so as I believe, it always will be, until the last generalization of all
brings us into the presence of that law which is indeed the thought of
God.
As I have been involved recently with young students and
areas of physics, I began to understand in very simple forms, the process of
nuclear energy and the power of it not just in death, but life. In nuclear
physics, one makes a powerful energy by splitting a tiny form, the atom, to
create a much greater energy. More
recently, atoms have been split by laser light.
As the sun shines brightly, it is producing an incredible
amount of energy that reaches us as light and heat. The light on the moon is a reflection of the
sun upon its dull surface. The sun is an
example of different kinds of energy, kinetic, electromagnetic radiation,
thermal, gravitational. In other forms
of energy I learned that Sound is also an energy.
Here is what I began to see in the vastness of God.
I read the famous
equation and Theory of Relativity of Albert Einstein’s, E=mc2.
E means
energy. The m means mass and c
stands for the speed of light and the 2 is squared. That means it is the Speed of Light x the Speed of Light. This equation led scientists to atomic and
nuclear energy. It makes a big bang of
energy.
The beginning of the Bible is Genesis 1 and it starts with
an account of creation. The word Genesis
means origin and it is also synonymous to birth. Some scientists
say that everything started with a “Big Bang.”
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and
the earth.
Genesis 1:2 The earth was without form and void, and
darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over
the face of the waters.
The presence of God’s
Spirit is hovering over a formless mass and water is mass, too. Water
is also a component that is part of every living thing.
Genesis 1:3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there
was light.
These were His first mentioned words. “Let there be light.” Sound.
And more.
As the Bible says also in John 1:4 NIV In him was life, and that life was the light
of all mankind.
If you look at God as Life and Light, then we read
that God as Light said, “Let there be light.”
We now have c2. Speed of Light x Speed
of Light.
Can you imagine this equation on a God-Powered level?! Mass times the speed of light squared equals
Energy! The Biggest, Life-giving Bang and
science has the equation but, it was written thousands of years ago by the hand
of Moses through the inspiration of His Holy Spirit. Life. Creation. Genesis.
The theory of relativity goes much further with time and
space and the speed of light which is the fastest moving thing that man can
measure. Light travels at a constant
finite speed of 186,000 miles a second. It
takes light 8.3 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth. It travels 93 million miles.
When we read of the “days” God created, the time can
possibly mean time in different ways than we know it and relativity, and speed
and time play into that. Science now uses the term “space time.” 2 Peter 3:8 NIV But do not forget this one thing, dear
friends; With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is
like a day. This is before any
thoughts of relativity were conceived scientifically.
As we become more aware of God, it says in Isaiah 29:18 NIV In
that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and
darkness the eyes of the blind will see.
My Dad is a physicist and he told me that when people need
glasses to see better, they need lenses that let more light into the eye when the eye lens is not capable of focusing an image properly onto your retina. The lens prescription is based on the amount
of bend into the lens to allow the proper bend amount to the light rays to sharpen the vision. Light is what allows the vision of the image on the retina. When you have seen animals that have lived in
caves for years and years like small fish or newts, their eyes no longer form
fully or open. You can see dark places
beneath their skin that look as if they were to be eyes. They remain blind
because they have no light and the need of continued growth of the eyes
stopped.
Light is what is needed to see. The word for light in Greek is pho. We see the word pho in photograph
which means light-writing. Photosynthesis.
Photons. All are the part of the
element of light.
This summer has been
a wet one. Water is a life-giving
element and so is light.
Even with all of the
rains this summer, my plants are not as big as they usually are this time of
year. We haven’t had many days of
sunlight. When the sun does come out, I
notice much more growth. Light carries
the energy to make my plants grow. This
is the process of photosynthesis. Light is a component necessary for growth and
vision.
Light is also equated to thought for ideas which is creativity and
understanding.(Notice the word create in creativity) Our cartoons will show a character and suddenly there is a light
bulb above their head. It means they had
an idea. In a more recent animated movie
called Despicable Me, the main character, Gru, doesn’t have a light bulb
when he has an idea. Instead, he says,
“Light bulb.” It is a humorous twist
representing that he had an idea.
There is a lot more in the Bible regarding light, the lamp
stand and being a light. The pillar of fire as a light in the night. The
tongues of fire at the time of Pentecost. The potential study, teaching and
insights to it already fascinate me.
May Jesus, the Light of this world, give you the vision to
fully see Him and open your eyes and your ears to more. LORD, let there be Light.
