Lessons from a Prism

It seems that God has built into the natural world all kinds of reminders about the nature of our relationship with Him. We repeatedly talk about how intelligence, order, and design are a natural part of the creation around us. One of the best examples of that is what we call lessons from a prism.

If you take sunlight and shine it on a prism (a solid triangular chunk of glass), the sunlight is broken up into all the colors of the rainbow. Each of those colors has a specific function In living things due to their different energies. Red has the lowest energy of visible light, and violet has the highest. The other colors have energies in between from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to violet. Green has the highest energy of light that makes it through the Earth’s atmosphere to reach us. Plants are green to reflect that highest energy, thus protecting the plants. Higher energies of light are scattered away from the Earth’s surface, making our sky blue.

The parallel to Jesus is astounding. In John 8:12, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” This idea is repeated over and over. (See John 1:4-5; 1 John 1:5-7.) Like natural light, the “light of the world” is made up of many things – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. We see all of those things in the lives of the followers of Jesus. The most energetic of these is love. That is why 1 Corinthians 13 is devoted to describing the unique power of the kind of love Jesus brings to the world. The Greek word used in that passage is “agape,” the most unique form of the five types of love the Greek language describes.

The lessons from a prism do not end with visible light. In the spectrum of physical light, some frequencies are not visible to our eyes. There are ultraviolet, Xrays, and gamma rays, all of which have incredible power beyond that of visible light. In the “light of the world” we have the operation of the Holy Spirit, who has power beyond anything we can imagine. He can make changes in each of us not only now, but also when time has ended.

On the other end of the physical spectrum, we have less energetic forms of light beyond red. These include infrared and all kinds of radio waves. Jesus came to the Earth to bring a special kind of light to all people. The problem with this part of the “light of the world” is that it involves words and the written page. People could and did reject what Jesus taught. Today people not only reject it but misinterpret and misrepresent what Jesus wants us to do. This light is less effective because humans are involved in making it work.

The ultimate future of the cosmos is that all light will be made into one. Second Peter 3:10-13 tells us that the elements will melt with fervent heat, and everything physical will be dissolved. We see confirmation of this in the equation E =mc^2. Peter goes on to say that this will lead to a New Heaven and a New Earth. Revelation chapters 21 and 22 describe some of the properties of this new spiritual existence. Paul had a vision of it in 2 Corinthians 12:3-5 and said that any words to describe it would be unspeakable.

Lessons from a prism remind us that we are the “light of the world” (Matthew 5:14-16). Understanding the magnificence of the spiritual spectrum seen in Christ Jesus gives us the tools to carry that light to those in darkness.

— John N. Clayton © 2020