There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
(Shakespeare, Hamlet)
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Did you know all color is a perception of light?
White light itself contains the entire color spectrum, as Newton discovered with his famous prism experiment. We are able to see the rays of all colors of the spectrum through bent glass or more famously through a break in a cloudy sky in the form of a rainbow. (The water in the clouds form the prism.)
But when we aren’t looking through prisms, our perception of color around us is actually an apprehension of light reflecting off of objects. My jacket, the pecan leaves, or my spinach salad are not green because they are green in and of themselves. Their chemical composition (of dyes, of molecules) are arranged in such a way that they absorb all the red and orange wavelengths and rejecting the green. Black is an absorption of all the waves. White is a reflection, or bouncing back, of all the waves. The color of all material things is pure chemistry.
There is something about color physics that resonates with me. It speaks about the whole Christological nature of reality. He is both science and mystical beauty.
He is the light that causes all things to be seen.
In Him we live and move and have our being.
There was nothing made that wasn’t made by Him.
I am completely formed and generated by Him. Every breath I take comes from Jesus. My DNA is formed by Jesus. My fingers typing right now find their motion from Jesus.
We like to say I belong to Jesus, and other devotional phrases that communicate our relationship with Him but this is never complete enough. If I only belonged to Him I would be just a possession as if I am His property, like a purse or a puppy. Nor am I just belonging as if He was a club that I am now a member of. Sure, once I was “outside” of that club of Jesus, but that was only in my mind, and any hostility toward this belonging was stemming from my own shame. (See Colossians 1.)
In Him I live and move and have my very being. That’s a fact, and so it is for you. Every breath I breathe is Christological air, and it is the light of Jesus Himself who colors me, who defines me, and allows me to perceive myself truly as I am.
Photo credit: © Amy McDonald Chapman. (Read my image policy.)
