Light

Scientists at UC Berkeley have developed a groundbreaking technology called Oz that uses laser light to make people see a completely new color — a dazzling, ultra-saturated blue-green they named olo. This new hue is unlike anything found in nature.

“Olo” was described as “a profoundly saturated teal … the most saturated natural color was just pale by comparison,” said Austin Roorda, one of Oz’s creators. The platform works by firing precise, tiny bursts of laser light at up to 1,000 light-sensitive cells — called photoreceptors — in the eye at once. With this control, researchers can make people see shapes, moving images, and especially colors that aren't normally visible.

The name Oz is a nod to The Wizard of Oz — a journey to an unknown land with sights never seen before. “We chose Oz to be the name because it was like we were going on a journey to the land of Oz to see this brilliant color that we’d never seen before,” said James Carl Fong, a doctoral student who helped develop the system.

Typically, humans see color using three kinds of cone cells in the retina: one each for blue, green, and red. But because green and red cones respond to very similar light, it's impossible in nature to trigger just the green ones alone. Oz overcomes this by activating only the green cones with laser light, letting people see what might be the “greenest green” ever — olo.

In experiments, people described olo as peacock green or blue-green, and far more intense than even a laser pointer’s green. “When I pinned olo up against other monochromatic light, I really had that ‘wow’ experience,” said Roorda.

Beyond just making people see new colors, Oz could help study vision loss and even explore whether we can expand how humans perceive color. As Roorda puts it: “I think that the human brain is this really remarkable organ that does a great job of making sense of inputs, existing or even new.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God’s light also reveals spiritual truths beyond our innate understanding

In his novel, This Is Happiness, Niall Williams’ elderly narrator, Noe (pronounced No), remembers when electricity and light came to their little Irish village of Faha:

I’m aware here that it may be hard to imagine the enormity of this moment, the threshold that once crossed would leave behind a world that had endured for centuries, and that this moment was only sixty years ago.

Consider this: when the electricity did finally come, it was discovered that the 100-watt bulb was too bright for Faha. The instant garishness was too shocking. Dust and cobwebs were discovered to have been thickening on every surface since the sixteenth century. Reality was appalling. It turned out Siney Dunne’s fine head of hair was a wig, not even close in color to the scruff of his neck, and Marian McGlynn’s healthy allure was in fact a caked make-up the color of red turf ash.

In the week following the switch-on, (store owner) Tom Clohessy couldn’t keep mirrors in stock, as people came in from out the country and bought looking glasses of all variety, went home, and in merciless illumination endured the chastening of all flesh when they saw what they looked like for the first time.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Such is the illumination of the gospel—in a person’s heart, in a community, even in a culture. It’s no surprise, then, that John 3:19 says, “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” James 1:23-24 warns against the folly of looking in the mirror of God’s Word only to walk away without changing.

For Mike Witmer, it began as a neighborly holiday game. Now it has become an enduring tribute. The Witmer’s Christmas lights were already up when Mike heard that his daughter’s friend from the swim team, Kevin, age 11, was coming home from the hospital, having been hospitalized with cancer. So, Mike decided to write “Get Well Kevin” in lights, and Mike’s wife told Kevin’s folks to swing through their court on their way home from the hospital.

Kevin loved the display, and he asked his mom, “Do you think Mr. Witmer will put my name in lights every year?” When Mike heard that his heart crushed and he thought, “Well, how can I not?” Kevin’s cancer went into remission, but every year Mike would hide the words “Hi” and “Kevin” in his display for Kevin to find it--like a Where’s Waldo? game between them.

Sadly, Kevin’s cancer returned, and he died at age 19. Mike spoke at Kevin’s funeral, telling the mourners he’d be making his “Hi Kevin” sign bigger that year, so Kevin would be able to see it from heaven. It has been on Mike’s garage roof every Christmas ever since.

“In the beginning,” Mike said, “my annual ‘Hi Kevin’ was just a silly gesture to a really nice kid who had been through some tough times. But it has been my honor to keep the salute going for his friends and family.”

Darkness captivates, baffles, and appalls us. It's a shifty thing of many textures, many moods, a state of fascination and of horror, an absence and a presence, solace and threat, a beginning and an end.

If you have ever been down a mine and been told by a guide to switch off your lamp you may feel like you have experienced it. But quantum physics has found that you are in fact surrounded by light you cannot see, for true darkness “does not exist.” Light particles—photons—exist throughout the known universe and beyond it.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Darkness is no impediment to our all-seeing God (Heb. 4:13). The One who created light (Gen. 1:3), sees all things (Prov. 15:3), nothing can conceal us from God, not even the deepest cave. Psalm 139:11-12 “… If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me’—even the darkness is not dark to You, but the night shines like the day, for darkness is as light to You.”

Astronomers have found the brightest known object in the universe—a glowing core of a galaxy, called a quasar, located 12 billion light-years away. Quasars are the brightest objects in the cosmos, each consisting of a supermassive black hole that’s actively devouring an orbiting disc of gas and dust. But the black hole in this record-setting quasar is gobbling up more than a sun’s-worth of mass every day, making it the fastest growing black hole scientists have ever seen.

The gargantuan object stretches about seven light-years across, and it puts our sun’s luminosity to shame—the quasar shines more than 500 trillion times brighter than the star in our solar system.

Christian Wolf, lead author of the new study, said, “This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe. It is a surprise that it has remained unknown until today, when we already know about a million less impressive quasars. It has literally been staring us in the face until now.”

The black hole in the quasar is ravenous, consuming an amount of material equivalent to as much as 413 suns each year, and its black hole weighs about the same as 17 billion suns.

Wolf said, “It looks like a gigantic and magnetic storm cell with temperatures of 10,000 degrees Celsius, lightning everywhere and winds blowing so fast they would go around Earth in a second. He told reports that he doesn’t think anything will ever top this record for the universe’s brightest object.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This newly identified object is 500 trillion times brighter than our sun! How can anything be that bright? Thinking about this star gives us a sense of what the glorious presence of God is like, for Scripture says that God is a being who "lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see."

Not only are the images from the James Webb Space Telescope brilliant and beautiful, but they are also baffling. Approximately 40 pairs of a new classification of orb have been identified within pictures of the Orion Nebula.

Dubbed JuMBOs—Jupiter Mass Binary Objects—these objects defy our current, conventional understanding of how planets, stars, and gravitational orbits work. Unlike normal planets, the Jupiter-sized pairs don’t orbit a star. Astronomers don’t know why—or how—they function in this way. As The New York Times put it, they are “a complete mystery.”

These images and discoveries coming back from the far reaches of space put us in our place. They bring to the forefront how expansive the universe is, how small we are, how much we don’t know, and how much there is yet to discover. When we consider the heavens—the star clusters, nebulae, black holes, and now JuMBOs—who are we? What is humankind that God is mindful of us and cares for us, as Psalm 8:3–4 says?

In “God’s Promises Are Clearest When We Turn Out the Lights,” Cort Gatliff reflects that “the stars provide perspective. They humble us by highlighting our finitude. Yet they also lift up our heads by reminding us of our infinite worth in the eyes of the Creator.” And while stunning images from space let us glimpse celestial realities we’d never be able to see with the naked eye, simple nighttime starscapes also invite us into awe and wonder.

During Advent, we often read this prophecy from Isaiah: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned” (9:2). In a spiritual and emotional sense, the recent heaviness of war, natural disasters, and other global tragedies helps us understand even more deeply what it means to be people walking in darkness. And this deep darkness only magnifies what it is to gaze upon the Light of the World. Amid it all, God is mindful of us. God does care for us. The Light of the World shines in the darkness.

"My husband Jerry was a ginormous presence. Such a happy guy," said his wife, Lori Belum. "He did everything for us. And he just loved Christmas."

The Belums were married in 2010 and had two sons, Benjamin and Sammy. Both boys love playing flag football and their dad loved supporting them even more. But the day after Thanksgiving, right after Benjamin scored the game-winning touchdown, an unbelievable tragedy occurred on the sidelines. Lori said, “Jerry just collapsed ... and that was it. A ruptured aortic dissection is what they called it and it's pretty much instant death."

In many ways, the Belums don't know how to move on. But they did know one way of honoring their beloved husband and father. The Belums took a trip to New York City to see Rockefeller Plaza, something they had planned to do with Jerry just a week prior to his death. And while they were away, neighbors got to work planning something special.

Neighbor Tracy Clancy said, “I think I labeled it 'Project Illumination' in the group chat.” The Belum's exterior Christmas decorations had already been unpacked. Jerry was planning to decorate the day he died. Then the neighbors huddled up to make sure his intentions came to light.

One neighbor said, “We wanted to do what Jerry had previously done to the house. But a little different because you know it can't be the exact same.” So, using a photograph of Jerry's decorations last year, the neighbors completed the house to near-perfection.

And upon returning home from New York, the Belums were shocked. "Who did it?" "Did Santa's helpers come by?" "They might have!" Those voices echoed from the backseat of the car in a video taken upon arrival. And the Belums now have a little more light to guide their way through life without Jerry.

Lori said, “We'll be together on Christmas and talk about him and get through it. It'll be hard, but we'll do it and we'll laugh and we'll cry and you know, we'll be okay. Right?”

It started in November with a single string of Christmas lights on a Baltimore County street. Kim Morton was home watching a movie with her daughter when she received a text from her neighbor who lives directly across the road. He told her to peek outside.

Matt Riggs had hung a string of white Christmas lights, stretching from his home to hers. He also left a tin of homemade cookies on her doorstep. The lights, he told her, were meant to reinforce that they were always connected.

Riggs said, “I was reaching out to Kim to literally brighten her world.” He knew his neighbor was facing a dark time. Morton had shared that she was dealing with depression and anxiety. She was also grieving the loss of a loved one and struggling with work-related stress. The mounting pressure led to panic attacks.

A bit of brightness was in order, he decided, but he certainly did not expect that his one strand of Christmas lights would somehow spark a neighborhood-wide movement. In the days that followed Riggs’ light-hanging gesture, neighbor after neighbor followed suit, stretching lines of Christmas lights from one side of the street to the other.

When Leabe Commisso, who lives on the other end of the block, saw what Riggs had done, she wanted in. She said, to her neighbor, “Let’s do it, too. Before we knew it, we were cleaning out Home Depot of all the lights.”

Quickly, other neighbors caught on. Kim said, “Little by little, the whole neighborhood started doing it. The lights were a physical sign of connection and love.”

She and Riggs were stunned to see neighbors with drills and ladders, up on their rooftops and tangled in trees, doing whatever they had to do to hang the lights. For the first time in a long time, a feeling of togetherness—and light—had returned.

Riggs said, “What blows my mind is that it was all organic. It just happened. There was no planning. It just grew out of everybody’s desire for beauty and joy and connection.”

But the impromptu effort has perhaps had the most profound impact on the person for whom it was originally intended. Kim said, “It made me look up, literally and figuratively, above all the things that were dragging me down. It was light pushing back the darkness.”

The Starbucks at the CIA headquarters is not allowed to take names for orders. It’s not “business as usual” for the Starbucks franchise housed inside the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. This particular store, code-named “Store Number 1,” operates much differently than their other 12,000+ stores in the U.S.—not surprising when it must accommodate clandestine spymasters working for the most powerful spy organization in the world.

This seller of skinny lattes and double cappuccinos is deep inside the agency’s forested Langley, Va., compound. Because the campus is a highly secured island, few people leave for coffee, and the lines can stretch down the hallway. Welcome to the “Stealthy Starbucks,” as a few officers affectionately call it.

Servers do not ask for the customer’s name (which they normally write on the coffee cup to expedite things), for undercover agents grow uncomfortable when someone asks for it. Even the receipts the baristas hand back have “Store Number 1” cryptically printed on them.

Each barista goes through a robust interview and background check before they are even told that they will be working at the CIA Starbucks. There are nine baristas working there and whenever they leave their work area, a CIA “minder” escorts them. All are regularly briefed about security risks and must report if someone seems overly interested in where they work or asks too many questions about their employment. They can’t even blow their own horns about working inside the CIA at nightclubs or parties and, if asked, can only tell friends, family members and acquaintances that they “work in a federal building.”

One barista said she has come to recognize people’s faces and their drinks. “There’s caramel-macchiato guy” and “the iced white mocha woman,” she said. “But I have no idea what they do. I just know they need coffee, a lot of it.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Compromise; Hiddenness; Light of the World - Agents and even baristas must remain secretive and anonymous at CIA headquarters. But there should be no “undercover Christians” who follow this pattern in their daily lives. Christ wants no hidden Christians; he wants us to shine as lights and be bold and open in our testimony as his followers. 2) Accountability; Secrets; Secrecy – Christians must be open and accountable with one another; there should be no hidden areas of our lives that we conceal while pretending to be godly. 3) Persecution – Some are covert Christians who practice Christianity in secret, often because they fear persecution or discrimination because they live in countries where Christianity is illegal or heavily restricted.

Sociologist Robert Woodberry has identified a robust statistical correlation between “conversionary Protestant” missionary activity and the democratization of a country. His conclusion: Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in non-governmental associations.

This was not a popular finding. Even the head of Woodberry’s dissertation committee warned him of the inevitable backlash: “To suggest that the missionary movement had this strong, positive influence on liberal democratization, you couldn’t think of a more unbelievable and offensive story to tell a lot of secular academics.”

But after years of extensive research, Woodberry nevertheless concluded, “Want a blossoming democracy today? The solution is simple—if you have a time machine: Send a 19th-century missionary.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

While Jesus didn’t tell us to go into all the world and make people literate, rich, and democratic, Woodberry’s findings illustrate the overwhelmingly positive influence of missionaries.

When was the last time you needed to use your cell phone as a flashlight, perhaps to look for something in the garage, read a menu at a darkly lit restaurant, or find something in the backyard at night? Why did you need it? Your answer probably includes some expression of dark or darkness.

As a sinner living with other sinners in a fallen world, you encounter darkness every day. While you may experience Instagram-worthy, sunny day picnic lunches, the reality is that life is more of a midnight walk through the woods. On any given day, you probably encounter more darkness than you do truth. So, to move forward without danger and get to where you are meant to go, you need something to light your way.

No passage gets at this need and God's provision better than Psalm 119:105: "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."