Seen & Unseen

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 1889, Vincent van Gogh committed himself to a psychiatric asylum in Southern France, where he spent a turbulent year creating roughly 150 paintings, including masterpieces such as “Irises,” “Almond Blossom” and “The Starry Night.”

Now, a former curator of ancient art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has teamed up with a group of conservators, scientists, and historians who believe they’ve discovered No. 151. It is a previously unknown Van Gogh portrait of a fisherman plucked from a Minnesota garage sale a few years ago by an unsuspecting antiques collector in Minnesota. The dealer called to say he’d spotted this fisherman in a bin of other paintings at a garage sale. He’d bought it because he liked the work’s impasto, or thickly painted brushstrokes.

A team of specialists is trying to prove that the canvas bought for less than $50 was painted by the iconic artist and is now worth $15 million.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Human Worth; Value - Just as we often find unexpected treasures in the most unlikely places, people, too, carry within themselves hidden value that may not be immediately apparent. Each individual holds unique talents, perspectives, and strengths waiting to be discovered and appreciated. By taking the time to look beyond the surface, we open ourselves to the possibility of uncovering remarkable qualities in others.

At first glance, Rolf Klasson, a gray-haired Swede who hobbles around on his walker, looked like an easy target. At least that's what two would-be robbers thought as they accosted him at a cash machine.

One of the thugs waved a knife while the other thug told Klasson to turn over his wallet. They didn't know that their victim was also the former European light-middleweight boxing champ.

Klasson warned them, "This isn't going to go well." When the men scoffed at his warning, he knocked one of them to the floor with a sharp right hook before laying the other out with a left jab. A police officer later said, "They came after the wrong guy."

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is a great little story to open up a sermon on the victory of the cross or spiritual warfare.

Astrology is a meme, and it’s spreading in that blooming way that memes do. On social media, astrologers and astrology-meme machines amass tens or hundreds of thousands of followers. People joke about Mercury retrograde, and categorize “the signs as ...” literally anything: cat breeds, Oscar Wilde quotes, and Stranger Things characters. In online publications daily, weekly, and monthly horoscopes and zodiac-themed listicles flourish.

This isn’t the first moment astrology has had and it won’t be the last. The practice has been around in various forms for thousands of years. In the decades between the New Age boom and now, while astrology certainly didn’t go away—you could still regularly find horoscopes in the back pages of magazines. Chani Nicholas, an astrologer based in Los Angeles said:

(For a time) it went back to being a little bit more in the background. Then something happened in the last five years that’s given it an edginess, a relevance for this time and place, that it hasn’t had for a good 35 years. Millennials have taken it and run with it.

The stigma has receded as the practice has grabbed a foothold in online culture, especially for young people. One researcher said, “Over the past two years, we’ve really seen a reframing of New Age practices, very much geared toward a Millennial and young Gen X quotient.”

Callie Beusman, a senior editor at Broadly, says traffic for the site’s horoscopes “has grown really exponentially.” SimilarWeb reported in December 2024 that the top 10 astrology sites received a total of 38 million visits in one month.

Editor’s Note: You can check the most up-to-date astrology stats on SimilarWeb here

Jennifer Nizza grew up on grew up on Long Island, New York, as part of an Italian and culturally Catholic family. For her, Christmas was mainly about Santa Claus, antipasto, and pretty lights on houses. However, her understanding of spirituality was limited to the supernatural realm, shaped by conversations about ghosts and early experiences with tarot cards.

At age 13, the door to demons was thrown wide open. a tarot card reading ignited a fascination with the occult. Jennifer delved deeper into this world, experiencing fear and discomfort as she felt the presence of demonic forces. Seeking answers, she consulted a psychic medium who claimed Jennifer was a medium herself, gifted with the ability to connect with the departed.

She writes, “But the further I went down that road, the more it seemed demons were surrounding me and I experienced so many moments of fear. I felt them touching me, and I could see them manifesting as shadowy figures and animals.

Jennifer loved the thought of helping clients attain the desires of their heart and communicate with their loved ones. But she lived in constant fear of bad spirits and what they would do to her. She said:

In my mid-30s, at a moment of especially intense fear, I suddenly cried out the name of Jesus Christ. Not my spirit guide or a deceased person or an angel—Jesus! Almost immediately I felt a peace that surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7). This began my journey to full Christian faith. And I had no idea what the gospel was. But I knew I didn’t want to be a psychic anymore.

Ten months later, a chance encounter with a friend who was attending a Bible-based church sparked Jennifer's curiosity. Despite initial hesitation, a few weeks later she felt a strong desire to visit the church. She shares:

I was singing along with the worship music when the lyrics “Jesus saved me” flashed on the screen, instantly transporting me back to the moment I had cried out to Jesus Christ. I started crying with joy, because I knew in my heart that he saved me.

Filled with joy and newfound conviction, I sought to understand the Bible's teachings on my profession. I didn’t have a Bible on hand, so I asked Google, “What does the Bible say about psychic mediums?” And I was shocked to find verses like Deuteronomy 18:9–13, which condemn anyone who “practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or . . . consults the dead.” Since Jesus had saved me, I would have to pick up my cross and follow him, even at the cost of quitting my job.

In the ten years since, Jesus has changed my heart and my life as only he can. I am no longer caught in the hamster wheel of endlessly seeking peace, joy, and fulfillment without finding them. Today, I continue to share the gospel whenever I can, in part by devoting myself to exposing the demonic darkness I served for many years and warning others against following the same path.

Editor’s Note: Today Jennifer Nizza is a speaker and Christian content creator. She is the author of From Psychic to Saved .

Artist Wendy McNaughton was distraught about the incivility in the U.S. So, she started using a drawing technique, called “blind contour” or “look closely.”

It works like this. Two people who have never met before sit at a small table across from each other. Then they follow these rules. Rule number one: never lift your pen off the page. Use one continuous line. Rule number two: never look down at the paper you’re drawing on. Keep your eyes fixed on your partner’s face the whole time.

McNaughton encourages participants to go slow and pay attention. Draw what you see, not what you expect to see.

Nearly all the participants fretted over their artistic ability, but I insisted they just start drawing. And when they were finished, they looked down and inevitably cracked up. The drawings were always hilarious. Teeth on foreheads and scribbles where lips should be. ... But the point of this isn’t the final product. It’s the process. Seeing each other. Participants were stunned by the connection they felt with someone they hadn’t met before, even after just 60 seconds. These former strangers were now, kind of, friends.

McNaughton concludes: “Imagine what would happen in our communities, if we slow down to look at one another.”

Forty years ago, First Lady Nancy Reagan was ridiculed for bringing astrology to the White House. She consulted a San Francisco astrologer who advised the Reagans on which days public appearances would be more optimal for the President's success and safety.

Today astrology is about far more than figuring out if your crush is compatible or which soup to eat based on your sign. Personal star watchers are must-have advisors for scheduling art openings, Hollywood premieres, book launches, and board meetings.

Because of the pandemic, a lot of people who hadn't found astrology are looking for answers, both personally and professionally. The global astrology economy was valued at $12.8 billion in 2021 and could reach $22.8 billion by 2031, according to a new report.

Astrologer Heidi Rose Robbins says, “I used to read for artists and healers. Now it's CEOs and stockbrokers. Sometimes it's about choosing the right time for a big negotiation, and other times it's about seeking fulfillment and purpose.”

According to Jennifer Freed, who has a yearlong waiting list and reads for Gwyneth Paltrow, best-selling authors, and CEOs:

There is no more stigma that is keeping people away from astrology. It's just cumulative math. You can test anything in the marketplace, and if it's not effective it will go away. Astrology has survived for thousands of years.

In the film Wonder, which is based on the novel with the same name, a 10-year-old boy named Auggie was born with a rare medical facial deformity. Auggie has been home-schooled his whole life. But in fifth grade, his parents make the decision to send Auggie to school. The film chronicles Auggie’s experience of acclimating to his new social environment, getting bullied for the way he looks, and slowly making friends.

The story is told from multiple perspectives, including the story of Auggie’s older sister, Via. Via loves Auggie and watches out for him, but she often feels unseen by her family because of how much attention Auggie requires. And so she adjusts her life around this reality. Via fades to the background and keeps the details of her life hidden from her parents. There’s this poignant moment when Via expresses how much she longs for her mother to cast her gaze fully on her.

And then there’s this scene, where Via is serving as a stagehand as well as the understudy for the lead role in the high school’s production of Our Town. Her parents are in the audience because Via’s best friend has the lead role. But then her friend, who sees an opportunity, pretends to be sick right before the curtain goes up, which thrusts Via onto the stage, while her parents sit in the audience watching her amazing performance.

After the play is over, her family comes backstage, overwhelmed by her performance. And then there’s this moment, where Via looks up, and everything else fades to the background, and her mom is staring her right in the eye, with this look of incredible love and pride. And she simply points at her. In that moment, it’s as if Via is receiving the fulfillment of a fundamental human desire: to be seen, to be known, and to be loved.

The scene can be found here.

There’s a well-known story about a famous violinist who took his $3.5 million Stradivarius onto a platform of a Washington DC subway and started playing music. He was dressed in a T-shirt and a ball cap. Joshua Bell was accustomed to playing for packed concert halls and getting paid $1,000 a minute. During his 43-minute solo concert in the subway a total of 1097 people passed by. But only seven people stopped to listen. He earned $32 in change.

J.T. Tillman, a computer specialist, was one of the people who walked by. He said, “I didn’t think nothing of it, just a guy trying to make a couple of bucks.” Tillman would’ve given him some cash, but he spent all his money on the lotto. When he was told that he stiffed one of the best musicians in the world, he asked, “Is he ever going to play around here again?” The reporter said, “Yeah, but you’re going to have to pay a lot to hear him.”

Exactly one person recognized Joshua Bell. Her name was Stacy. She positioned herself 10 feet away from Bell, front row, center. She had a huge grin on her face. She said, “It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in Washington. Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush-hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some more flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?’”

More Americans believe their home is inhabited by someone or something that isn’t a living being. A study from the company Vivint found that nearly half of the thousand surveyed homeowners believed that their house was haunted. Another survey of 1,000 people found similar results, with 44 percent of respondents saying that they’ve lived in a haunted house.

One researcher offers the following explanations for this phenomenon. Haunted houses can be “a way to connect to the past or a sense of enchantment in the everyday world. [Younger generations in particular] might be searching for meaning in new places. If the modern world they live in isn’t providing food for the soul … it’s not hard to figure out that younger people will search elsewhere for that and find the idea of an alternate world — of ghosts, aliens, et cetera — to be enticing to explore.”

Another researcher claims that the pandemic also played a role in society’s relationship with houses and ghosts. The presence of death in our culture increased, igniting a desire for evidence of an afterlife for some people. “Think of all the sudden, and often not-sufficiently-ritually-mourned deaths during COVID. Many times, people lost loved ones with no last contact, no funeral.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

When people stop attending church or believing in Christianity they don’t stop seeking “spiritual experiences.” The spiritual hunger is still there.

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.

A new study is giving new meaning to the phrase “this city would eat you alive.” Scientists from the University of Miami say sharks are not avoiding the local shoreline. Instead, these predators are spending plenty of time quite close to the sights and sounds of the city.

On a global scale, the world’s coastlines are urbanizing at a rapid rate. So how is that impacting local aquatic life? Researchers decided to investigate by tracking the movements of sharks around the Miami shoreline. Considering the loud noises, chemicals, and bright lights, the research team fully expected the sharks to avoid South Beach like a bad habit. That’s not what they saw.

Researcher Neil Hammerschlag said, “Since other studies have shown that land predators are urban avoiders, we expected sharks to be too. We were surprised to find that the sharks spent so much time near the lights and sounds of the busy city, often close to shore, no matter the time of day.”

Plenty of animals, like pigeons or raccoons, thrive in cities. Meanwhile, “urban adaptors” spend some time in urban areas, but still largely rely on the great outdoors. On the other end of the spectrum, we find most land-based predators like wolves. These animals, called “urban avoiders,” want nothing to do with civilization.

Study authors once thought that sharks are urban avoiders, but ultimately concluded they act much more like urban adaptors. Sharks are closer to the beach than you might think.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Satan, the roaring lion, is also closer than you might think. He constantly prowls looking for the unwary to devour (1 Pet. 5:8) and we need to be aware of his schemes (2 Cor. 2:11).

Heath Adamson shares the story of his deliverance from the occult and addiction in an article in CT magazine. Even as a child, the spiritual world was real to him because of his involvement with the occult. Heath remembers watching a chair slide across the floor and a candle floating off the coffee table. His experiences with the supernatural led him on an all-consuming quest for answers.

Then in eighth grade a female classmate sensed in her heart that God was whispering Heath’s name. The whisper said something to the effect of, “Pray for that young man. You are going to marry him one day.” They struck up a relationship, but when the school year ended, they went their separate ways. She attended church, but Heath had regular encounters with the demonic realm, became addicted to numerous drugs, looked like a human skeleton, and lived life in quiet desperation.

Heath then writes:

In my junior year of high school, I asked my physics partner about religion and he invited me to church. I actually went and one Sunday night, I lay in my bedroom thinking about who God was and what the truth could be. I felt like God himself had come into my room. I remember saying out loud, “Jesus, you are who you say you are.” Deep inside, I believed he loved me the way I was. God’s presence was so real that I could almost feel him breathing in my face.

I told my physics partner I would go back to church with him on a Wednesday night. I said, “Remember when the pastor asked if people wanted to ask Jesus to forgive them. Well, I think I need to do that.” At the end of the service, a volunteer pastor said a prayer and shared the gospel. I was the only one who responded. That night, when I embraced the grace of Jesus, my body was supernaturally and instantaneously healed. My substance addictions vanished.

The very next day, I discovered something incredible in the mailbox. Inside was a handwritten letter from the girl who dared to listen in eighth grade when God touched her heart. It just happened to land in the mailbox the day after I met God. After I married that amazing girl, I found her prayer journals. That’s when I discovered how God used the prayers of her and others, often whispered when no one was watching, to help soften my hardened heart.

Looking back at my salvation, I am the product of a girl who dared to believe when God whispered, an invitation to church, and the power of prayer. And most of all the Savior who stepped into my darkness and, instead of turning away in horror, showed me who he was and who I was created to be.

This small, rural community in upstate New York looks like many others in the state. Victorian cottages cozy up to one another and large oaks dot sidewalks. But look closer and you’ll start to see the “Medium Open” signs or stumble upon the Healing Temple. Welcome to Lily Dale, America’s oldest Spiritualist community.

Lily Dale was founded in 1879 as an adult Spiritualism summer camp. People would come, set up tents, and then wait for the dead to arrive. Seances and message services followed. Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, even Thomas Edison (maybe), joined in. Spiritualism is committed to proving the continuity of life by communicating with spirits who have passed on,

What began as that tented summer commune now is a small hamlet, with about 250 residents, many of whom are registered mediums. Every summer, Lily Dale welcomes an estimated 30,000 visitors. Some are searching for healing or spiritual guidance. Others come out of curiosity or skepticism.

At 4pm a service is held at the Forest Temple, an outdoor structure that dates back to 1894. At these services, a medium gets up in front of an audience and starts listening for dead people. “I’m getting a Mary. Can anyone claim a Mary?” There’s a beat or two of silence, and then (most of the time) someone raises their hand in the audience. Then the medium is thoughtful, as if listening to a phone call on a bad line. “Mary wants you to know that she’s always watching over you and that she’s walking beside you in this life.” And then Mary leaves and the medium continues her work as moderator for the afterlife.

Medium Elaine Thomas doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Spiritualism reached its zenith against the backdrop of the American Civil War and World War I. She says, “Spiritualism grew out of people’s pain and their subsequent need to find healing. Spiritualism and mediums demonstrate that life continues beyond the grave.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Many people are also grieving in these turbulent times of pandemic, wars, and violence, and are searching for comfort. “When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isa. 8:19). Only in Christ can they find the truth and comfort they need (John 14:1-6; 1 Thess. 4:18).

In an issue of CT magazine, author Jen Wilkin writes of the difficulty in describing the glory of heaven:

I am a competitive game player. A few years ago at a party, the host brought out Pictionary for the evening’s entertainment. Ready to wow the room with my skills, I glanced at the word on my card: “Difficult.” I had played Pictionary for years and had never had a word that hard. My mind went blank.

Nothing seemed to rhyme with it or illustrate it. The timer ran out, and in utter frustration I said, “How ironic that my word was ‘difficult’!” Holding up the card as proof, I realized I had accidentally drawn not a card for game play but the instruction card listing each of the categories for different words. Difficult, indeed. I spent 60 seconds trying to illustrate an abstract idea, trying to draw the undrawable.

My dilemma made me think of the Book of Revelation. John, in describing the new heaven and the new earth, is playing the hardest round of Pictionary known to man—he is called upon to describe the indescribable. Talk about difficult. He writes “The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone,” (Rev. 21:18–19).

At first glance, it seems that streets made of gold are meant to stir our excitement to live in a place where opulence abounds at every level. But John’s description of heaven takes things we esteem the highest in this life and reduces them to the level of commonplace.

All of these elements—gold, precious stones, crowns—are things that we exalt. These are all the idols of this world. When John determines to describe the indescribable, he turns our human expectations upside down.

Heaven is a first-is-last place where the things we have exalted will be cast down to the level of their real worth: as mere metal and stone. Heaven is a place where precious metals and stones are trodden under foot as common road dust. Where our crowning personal honors are cast at the feet of God. Where the people and objects and institutions to which we have ascribed our worship will fall from their lofty places. It is a place whose inhabitants at last obey the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

In the early Twentieth Century, Spiritualism was very popular. Mediums and fortune tellers claimed to be able to make contact with the dead and their claims were given legitimacy by such well-known supporters as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series. However, there were also individuals who worked diligently to debunk the claims of these spiritists, among them the famous magician Harry Houdini.

Houdini was one of the most popular performers at the time and he would travel and give live performances across the United States. Part of his magic act involved recreating some of the illusions used by so-called mediums. He would reveal to how slight-of-hand and simple tricks could be effectively used to make people believe they were being contacted by their dead loved ones.

Houdini himself had previously investigated the legitimacy of these practices in part because of his own desire to reconnect with his deceased mother. After a failed attempt to contact her spiritually, he realized the vulnerable position of grieving people. Houdini became disgusted with the way spiritists took advantage of those in mourning.

A handful of individuals were employed by Houdini to go into cities prior to his performance there. Included in these “ghost-busters” was Rose Mackenberg. She would attend seances and meet psychics wearing various disguises and pretend to want to contact the dead. She would then report back to Houdini. On the night of the performance Houdini would call out specifically the local spiritists and disprove their supernatural claims.

Houdini’s actions were motivated by a desire to expose fraud. He knew that many people were comforted by their interactions with these mediums, but he also knew that those mediums were hucksters looking to take advantage of them. He believed it was more important to take away the comfort provided by the deception in order to reveal the truth.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Error; Truth - It is important to know the truth even when it hurts. Many unbelievers may be comfortable in their ignorance of the truth, but ultimately their worldview is a deception. As Christians we have the truth and it is our responsibility to share it with others even when it is uncomfortable. 2) Afterlife; Occult – This illustration could also be used when preaching a text that involves spiritism, such as the medium of Endor.

Are you a good person? There’s an easy way to tell, according to the Internet at least. It’s based on what you do with a shopping cart when you are done with it. If you put it in the designated shopping cart collection area in the parking lot, you’re good. If you leave it to drift off into parking spots, you’re bad.

The test has been discussed on Reddit and Twitter. On Reddit, a user laid out a very detailed description of the theory that essentially claims:

The shopping cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society. Objectively, the correct action to take is to put the shopping cart where it’s supposed to go. It’s not illegal to abandon the cart, so you can do that without consequence. … Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you … or fine you … you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do.

Another said:

For a date you need to take them to a restaurant and do the waiter test & then later go to the store with them & do the shopping cart test.

Finally,

The only way to truly know a person’s character, is to secretly follow them to the grocery store and watch what they do with the cart when they’re done.

You can view the Reddit thread here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God also tests our character, but instead of the shopping cart test, God uses other measures to examine us: The test of love (1 Cor. 13), the test of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), the test of Christlikeness (Rom. 8:29), the stress test (1 Pet. 1:7), and others.

Physicist Alan Lightman is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for specializing in the intersection between science, philosophy, religion, and spirituality. He writes about a profound, transcendent experience in his life:

It was a moonless night, and quiet. The only sound I could hear was the soft churning of the engine of my boat. Far from the distracting lights of the mainland, the sky vibrated with stars. I turned off my running lights, and it got even darker. Then I turned off my engine. I lay down in the boat and looked up. A very dark night sky seen from the ocean is a mystical experience.

After a few minutes, my world had dissolved into that star-littered sky. The boat disappeared. My body disappeared. And I found myself falling into infinity. A feeling came over me I’d not experienced before. ... And the vast expanse of time — extending from the far distant past long before I was born and then into the far distant future long after I will die — seemed compressed to a dot. I felt connected not only to the stars but to all of nature, and to the entire cosmos. I felt a merging with something far larger than myself, a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute.

Lightman is in awe of nature but is unsure where that should lead him:

It is almost as if Nature in her glory wants us to believe in a heaven, something divine and immaterial beyond nature itself. In other words, Nature tempts us to believe in the supernatural. But then again, Nature has also given us big brains, allowing us to build microscopes and telescopes and ultimately, for some of us, to conclude that it’s all just atoms and molecules. It’s a paradox.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God offers unbelievers opportunities to consider the meaning of life, eternity, and their place in it. Some, like this professor will taste and then turn away (Heb. 6:4-10), while others will recognize the hand of Almighty God and bow before him (Ps. 8, Ps. 19).

When Ian and Michelle Horne got married, he wore a purple tie on their wedding day because it was her favorite color. Then came the pandemic.

In fall of 2020, after a long battle, Michelle died from complications caused by COVID-19. But not long after his wife's death, Ian wondered if Michelle was still speaking to him.

He was driving to his job as a local radio DJ in the predawn darkness when he spotted something odd. About two dozen streetlights flanking the highway had turned purple. They looked like a lavender string of pearls glowing in the night sky.

Ian took it as a sign. He said, "Michelle knew that was my route to work that I take every morning and was the route she took on her final drive to the hospital. I remember simply smiling and feeling overwhelmed with the idea that Michelle was close."

The coronavirus pandemic has now killed more than 600,000 Americans. Many never had a chance to hug or say farewell to loved ones who died alone and isolated in hospital wards. But there is another group of pandemic survivors who say they have been granted a second chance to say goodbye. They are people like Horne who believe they've been contacted by a loved one who died from coronavirus.

These experiences can be subtle: relatives appearing in hyper-real dreams, or a sudden whiff of fragrance worn by a departed loved one. Other encounters are more dramatic: feeling a touch on your shoulder at night, or seeing the full-bodied form of a recently departed relative appear at the foot of your bed.

These stories may sound implausible, but they are in fact part of a historical pattern. Whenever there is a massive tragedy such as a pandemic, a war, or a natural disaster, there is a corresponding surge in reports of people seeing the dead or trying to contact them.

The 1918 influenza epidemic sparked a "spiritualism craze" as Americans turned to seances and Ouija boards to contact departed loved ones. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks came a wave of people reporting sightings of and even conversations with those who had been snatched from their lives.

These experiences are so common in the psychological field that there is a name for them: ADCs, or "after death communications." Research suggests at least 60 million Americans have these experiences, and that they occur across cultures, religious beliefs, ethnicities, and income levels.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is natural to mourn the tragic loss of a loved one and to need time to adjust to their absence. Our emotions can powerfully affect us in such cases. However, we need to put our faith and trust in Christ who holds the keys to life and death. Only he can comfort us and we should depend only on his promises of life after death and reunification with loved ones (John 11:25-26; 1 Thess. 4:13-18).

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).