Message in a Bottle

I wondered how a camera's sensor reproduces the world around us, both in shape and color. Then I looked at a plastic water bottle and noticed how it reflected the sunlight and the hazy blue sky and the shadowy interior of my car. 

water bottle, a photo by Muffet on Flickr.

That was an epiphany. 

I realized that not only can a camera reproduce the world, but quiet lakes, eyeglasses, and water bottles do too. Every time I look in the bathroom mirror I'm seeing a reflection of the world around me—my bathroom, perfectly reproduced on a sheet of silver-backed glass. 

So I ask myself, why doesn't everything reflect? And then another epiphany: everything does reflect. Everything my eye sees is only visible because it reflects light.* That green tree isn't inherently green; it's actually everything but green so that it reflects back green light and that's why I see. A strawberry is red because it's reflecting back red light, etc. So every blade of grass, every coffee maker, every fire hydrant, every necklace, is just a reflection—

the world is a reflection. 

And the things that don't reflect? Those are things in the dark, things we have no hope of seeing.

What does the Bible say about light? It says that Jesus is the Light of the World, and that all who are His are living in the light, but there are those who don't want to live there (John 3:19–21). They hide in darkness, because that is where their evil will go undetected. So this means that those who are in Christ are His reflectors, representations of His light. When the world sees us, it sees part of Him. There are parts of us that reflect Him better than others (the underside of my palm is dimmer than the top of my head at times), but I am what I am simply because I am reflecting God's light. What a concept! 

The moment I try to get away from that, when I try to live life as if I am inherently something visible, I become invisible. When I stop reflecting, I am like a tree that tries to be "green" all by itself, and becomes invisible in the depths of its own darkness. 

Practical application: Instead of saying, "What am I going to do today?" ask "Who is God and how can I reflect His Spirit today?"

"But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit."

-2 Corinthians 3:18

* If that's confusing, check out the basic explanation of color as reflected light.