Invisible God

Humans have color vision because our eyes contain three types of cone cells. One cone helps us see blue, another to see green, and the third to see red. This is called trichromatic vision. The brain combines signals from these three types of cones to perceive a wide range of colors, allowing humans to distinguish millions of different colors from periwinkle to chartreuse.

There is, however, a rare breed living among us called tetrachro¬mats. They possess a fourth cone, allowing them to see a hundred mil¬lion colors that are invisible to the rest of us. For every color a trichromat sees, a tetrachromat perceives a hundred hues!

I can't help but wonder if we'll get a fifth cone in heaven, enabling us to perceive a billion colors. Or perhaps a sixth, seventh, or hun¬dredth cone! By earthly standards, we'll have extrasensory perception. Everything will smell better, taste better, sound better, feel better, and look better. With our newly glorified senses, we'll hear angel octaves.

Remember when Elisha was surrounded by the Aramean army? He said to his very confused assistant, "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." Elisha prayed that the Lord would open his servant's eyes, and it's almost like God created an extra cone. "He looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha."

Possible Preaching Angle: If our spiritual eyes were opened, what would we see? We'd see what's really happening! We'd see guardian angels, as the scriptures describe them ministering to those who will inherit salvation (Heb. 1:14). We'd discern the manifest presence of God, perhaps like Moses who encountered God's glory on the mountain or Isaiah in God’s throne room (Exod. 33:18-23; Isa. 6:1-7). We'd perceive powers and principalities, those unseen forces at work in the world, as Paul warns us about (Eph. 6:12).

In May 2022 astronomers announced an extraordinary discovery. They claimed they had pierced the veil of darkness and dust at the center of our Milky Way galaxy to capture the first picture of “the gentle giant” dwelling there. It is a supermassive black hole, a trapdoor in space-time through which the equivalent of four million suns have been dispatched to eternity, leaving behind only their gravity and violently bent space-time.

The image, released in six simultaneous news conferences in Washington and around the globe, showed a lumpy doughnut of radio emission framing empty space. Oohs and aahs broke out at a meeting with the press when Feryal Özel of the University of Arizona displayed what she called “the first direct image of the gentle giant in the center of our galaxy.” She added, “I met this black hole 20 years ago and have loved it and tried to understand it since. But until now, we didn’t have the direct picture.”

In 2019, the same team captured an image of the black hole in a different galaxy. One astronomer described the discovery this way: “We have seen what we thought was ‘unseeable.’”

Possible Preaching Angles:

One day, the Bible promises that we will see the “unseeable” when we meet God face-to-face and Jesus wipes every tear from our eyes.

Sandra McCracken writes in CT magazine:

A few years ago, I sat on the front porch of an old farmhouse in Vermont … with two friends. Above us, at the corner of the house, hung a hummingbird feeder. Tiny winged visitors stopped by intermittently to eavesdrop while sipping nectar from the glass globe.

Hummingbird wings move at about 50 beats per second. But when they (hover), hummingbirds can appear completely motionless. A miracle of fitness and form, God made these creatures to be a delicate display of paradox: They are still and active at the same time.

These birds are a moving metaphor for the kind of trust that God outlines in Isaiah 30:15: “You will be delivered by returning and resting; your strength will lie in quiet confidence” (CSB). When I think of God’s grace at play in my own life, my most successful moments happen when I hold steady at the center. Confidence is not found in productivity, but in quietness of heart.

Our plans are not like his plans. As the hummingbird moves, his wings are invisible to us. So too the work of God is often hard to see in the moment, but nevertheless something remarkable is happening. This is what the Lord says: “Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it?” (Isa. 43:19).

In the heart of Manhattan, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hangs a famous painting by the 16th century Spanish El Greco. The painting, titled The Vision of St. John, was completed around 1614. But it looks like it could have been painted in Paris in the early twentieth century. Its feel is not only modern but also contemporary. Evoking the opening of the Fifth Seal in Revelation 6:9-11, the martyrs who bore faithful witness to Christ are given white robes while John (it seems) looks heavenward toward the epiphany of the Lamb. The colors of the painting are themselves a startling revelation of another reality.

But the painting as we view it today is only a fragment. The canvas that hangs in the Met doesn't tell the whole story. In the course of a "restoration" project around 1880, the unfinished canvas was trimmed by at least 68 inches (or almost half the original painting). In the name of "improvement," the scene is truncated by almost half. And so, in what seems a fitting parable of modernity, the exultant arms of the Apostle John reach upward to—nothing: to the top of the frame, to the edge of the canvas. The martyrs seem to receive gifts from nowhere, and John seems to praise the nonexistent. All of them seem to look for something no longer there.

You can view the painting here: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/436576

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Secularism—Is it possible that much of our world operates the same way? In other words, we've been cut off from the Source of reality, the Source of all that is good and true. Is it possible that someone has trimmed the frame and we no longer see that there is so much more to the beautiful portrait of life? (2) God, presence of; Faith, loss of—Is it possible that we live our lives with a sense that God is really there?

On an episode of Saturday Night Live, the comedian Louis C.K. shared his beliefs about the impossibility of atheism:

I'm not religious. I don't know if there is a god. That's all I can say honestly. I don't know. Some people can say that they know there isn't a god. That's a weird thing you can say you know. "There's no god." "Are you sure?" "Yea, there's no god." "How do you know?" "Because I didn't see him."

"But how do you know? There's a vast universe. You can see for about 100 yards when there's not a building in the way. How can you possibly know? Did you look everywhere? Did you look in the downstairs bathroom?" "No, I haven't seen him yet." "Well, I haven't seen [the film] 12 Years as a Slave yet, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

In his book God's Undertaker, science writer John C. Lennox explains the scope and limits of science with the following story:

Let us imagine that Aunt Matilda has made a beautiful cake, and we take it along to be analyzed by a group of the world's top scientists …. The nutrition scientists will tell us about the number of calories in the cake and its nutritional effect; the biochemists will inform us about the structure of proteins, fats, etc. in the cake … the physicists will be able to analyze the cake in terms of fundamental particles; and the mathematicians will no doubt offer us a set of elegant equations to describe the behavior of those particles.

We have certainly been given a description of how the cake was made and how its various [ingredients] relate to each other, but suppose I now ask the assembled group of experts a final question: Why was the cake made? The grin on Aunt Matilda's face shows she knows the answer, for she made it for a purpose. But all the [scientists] in the world will not be able to answer the question—and it is no insult to their disciplines to state their incapacity to answer it. Their disciplines … cannot answer the "why" questions connected with the purpose for which the cake was made. In fact, the only way we shall ever get an answer is if Aunt Matilda reveals it to us. But if she does not disclose the answer to us, the plain fact is that no amount of scientific analysis will enlighten us.

I'll never forget something I saw when I walked into the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. Just inside the door, in an alcove, was an arrangement called "The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation's Millennium General Assembly." There were 180 pieces in the arrangement—from tables to chairs to small decorative items—all pulled together by James Hampton, a quiet, virtually unknown janitor from the D.C. area. Hampton simply wanted to depict God's throne room.

This extraordinary collection had been found in his garage after he died in 1964. No one knew he had been working on it for some 20 years. All these pieces were made from cast-off items—old furniture, gold and aluminum foil from store displays, bottles, cigarette boxes, wine bottles, rolls of kitchen foil, used light bulbs, cardboard, insulation board, construction paper, desk blotters, and sheets of transparent plastic—all precariously held together with glue, tape, tacks, and pins.

On a bulletin board in the garage he had copied this verse from Proverbs 29:18: "Where there is no vision the people perish." He believed people needed a vision of God's glory, so he set out, singlehandedly, to give it to them.

No one knows much about James Hampton, but we know this: what he imagined as God's throne room has become a national treasure.

In 1993, Lt. Col. Gary Morsch joined the Army Reserves as a doctor to care not only for U.S. soldiers, but also for wounded civilians and prisoners of war. In 2005, as a part of the war in Iraq, he was called up to serve as the field doctor for a battalion near the Iranian border. He would take care of soldiers in the medical tent, provide supervision and training to eight combat medics, and visit two detainee camps to treat POWs. Even in that war-torn area of the world, Lt. Col. Morsch experienced the peace of God. He says:

One day I was supposed to travel by convoy to a military hospital in Baghdad to accompany a prisoner with a severe abdominal infection, but the mission was canceled after a bomb hit a convoy returning to our camp. That was the third time in five days that one of our convoys had been hit, so we waited until a nearby combat unit could beef up security. A day later we headed out.

As I sat in the back of a Humvee with this very sick POW, I asked myself what I thought every soldier in that convoy was asking: Why are we doing this for someone we consider our enemy? I could see risking my life and the lives of American soldiers for another American. But risking all this for an enemy POW?

In addition to the anxiety I was feeling as we made our way along the dangerous road to Baghdad, I was also feeling very lonely and homesick. When I realized that it was Sunday, and that I was going to miss the chapel service again, I grew even more depressed.

So there I was in this armored vehicle, wearing about 50 pounds of body armor, helmet and weapons—the full "battle rattle." Standing next to me was the gunner, his head sticking through the roof of the Humvee, constantly spinning one way, then another, aiming his machine gun at anything that moved, looking for snipers, motioning for cars to stop or move out of the way, and screaming at drivers who didn't understand.

We drove down the highway as fast as we could, trying to make ourselves a more difficult target to attack, tailgating the Humvee in front of us so a suicide car bomber could not come between us, and being tailgated by another Humvee. Sitting in front of me was a soldier monitoring the radio, who received messages from the Humvees ahead of us and yelled this information to the gunner and me.

I decided to fight off my sorrow by listening to some music on my MP3 player. My son-in-law, Eric, had loaded my player with about 1,000 songs before I left home. Since it was Sunday, I decided to listen to some praise music. The first song was by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir: "Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place; I can feel His mighty power and His grace: I can hear the brush of angels' wings, I see glory on each face; surely the presence of the Lord is in this place."

Speeding toward Baghdad, crammed into the back of a Humvee, I sensed the presence of God as never before. I felt enveloped by the presence of God—God around me, God above me, God in me. As tears ran down my dusty cheeks, I peered through the thick, bulletproof window at Iraqis in their flowing robes, their mud-walled houses, children at play, the tall and stately palm trees. And just as surely as I felt the presence of God in that Humvee, I sensed God's presence in all that I saw—here, in this desolate country, with the Shiites, the Sunnis, the Kurds. God was surely here. He loves Iraq.

Then I thought of what this convoy was doing, and the words of Jesus came to me: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). I was filled with a deep sense of peace. I was still worried about the road ahead, but I had a sense of contentment that everything was going to be fine, no matter what happened. I knew that God profoundly loved every person on both sides of this war.

This sense of peace and contentment lasted throughout my time in Iraq. It had nothing to do with bravery or courage on my part, but everything to do with the sense that God was with me, and that many people were praying for me.

Author/speaker Jennifer Rothschild was diagnosed at 15 with a rare, degenerative eye disease that would eventually steal her sight. In her DVD study Fingerprints of God, Jennifer shared the following story:

It was a very crowded bus, and all the passengers looked sympathetically as Susan made her way down the aisle. She fumbled with her cane, and as she nestled herself into her seat, the onlookers just watched with questions and concern. You see, it had been a year since Susan lost her sight.

When she first became blind, she fell into a deep pit of depression. Her world had crumbled, her sadness overtook her. Not only was her heart crushed, but so was the heart of her husband, Mark. He so loved his wife and wanted to help her, and so he did. Inch by inch, he helped to pull her out of that pit of depression, helped give her skills and confidence, and to regain her sense of self. And that husband, so in love with his wife, did all that he could to help her in her new state of darkness.

Well, after many months of Susan's blindness, she began to feel more confident because of Mark's help, and she felt like she could perhaps return to her job again. And Mark promised that he would help her, of course, with that also. So every day, Mark would drive his wife to work, walk her into the office, make sure she was settled, and then leave and go to his base that was across town, because Mark was a military officer. Then, he would come back and get her from work. This went on for several weeks. And with every day, though Mark so wanted to help his wife, the burden was becoming heavier because it was becoming logistically impossible for him to make it to his base on time.

He dreaded having to announce to Susan that he wasn't going to be able to drive her to work. But in the end, he had to. "I can't ride the bus to work," she replied. "I'm blind. How am I going to know how many stairs there are? How am I going to know what path to take? I feel like you are abandoning me."

Mark's heart was crushed. He promised her, like he had done from the very beginning, he would do whatever it took to help her until she felt confident and independent on the bus. He helped her with the routes. He helped her learn the stairs and learn the paths. And so, finally, after several weeks of doing such, Susan was confident. He went to his base; she went to her work.

Monday morning, she got on the bus. She went to work, she came home; it was flawless. Then Friday morning arrived. Susan made her way onto the bus, and as she went to pay her fare, the bus driver said, "Ma'am you sure are lucky." Susan said, "Are you talking to me?" The bus driver said, "Yeah. It must feel good to be cared for as you are." Susan replied, "I don't know what you mean, sir."

The bus driver said: "Well, you know, every morning when I drop you off at your stop, as soon as those doors open, I can see that man standing over there at the corner. And he watches you. As soon as you step off the bus, his eyes are on you. I think he's some kind of military officer because of his uniform. And his eyes follow you as you walk across that parking lot. And his eyes don't leave you as you're trying to walk up those stairs. And when your hand touches that door knob, his eyes are on you. Until you open that door and go inside, that man doesn't take his eyes off you. And once that door closes, he stands straight and tall, like a sentinel, and he salutes you, and then he blows you a kiss."

Susan burst into tears. She had no idea that her husband had been watching her. But the lover of her soul never takes his eyes off of her.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.