Thursday, November 14, 2013

GCHEM Devotional 3

My breath seemed to add more clouds to the foggy darkness as I went on my early-morning run. Coming out of the dorm, it had not seemed too dark, and I had left my flashlight behind, but as I emerged from the circles of light that glowed around lampposts and buildings, the darkness and fog closed in thicker than I had anticipated. The paved path blended with the wet ground; only the firmness of the cement assured me of the correct course. I was just starting to pull out my phone to use as a flashlight, when the thumping of my steps turned to crunching. Without even realizing it, I had gone off the path. Quickly, I tapped on my flashlight app, and a bright beam of light showed me my surroundings. Now I easily found my way back to my running rout.
            Without the light, I could not see the way, and I stepped off the path. Without Christ, “the light of the world,”1 I can not see spiritually, and I will step off His path. Throughout the Bible, Christ is referred to as the “light of the world.”2 He brings spiritual sight and understanding to His followers, just as light brings physical sight. He is the One who shows the way to heaven.
            Still, the parallels between Christ and light go deeper. Christ has a dual nature. He is fully human and fully divine. Visible light also has a dual nature: particle and wave. Young’s double-slit experiment is an example of this. Young showed that light has a wave-like nature by shining a single beam of light through a screen containing two slits and on to another screen. When the light passed through the slits it shone a pattern on the last screen. There were alternating bands of light and dark on the screen; called an interference pattern. This can be explained by the wave-like nature of light: where light waves meet trough-to-trough and crest-to-crest when they hit the screen, they amplify each other, but where troughs and crests meet, they cancel each other, causing the dark bands on the screen.3 Yet, on closer examination, Young’s experiment showed the particle nature of light as well.
            Even when only one photon of light at a time is shone at the double-slit screen, over a period of time, the interference pattern still shows up, exemplifying that light behaves as a wave. The only exception to this is when the slits are closely observed to find out which slit each photon passes through. If each photon is watched closely, light stops traveling like a wave and starts traveling like single particles.4 The interference pattern disappears, and only two bands of light show up on the final screen. Simply by close observation, light’s particle properties can be observed, but at the same time, its wave-like properties disappear. Somehow, light is both a wave and a particle, but scientists still do not fully understand how this can be. The whole picture can not be observed or understood all at once.
            Christ’s dual nature is something that we can not fully grasp now either. We can see from His Word that He is fully God and fully man, but how He can be both at the same time is beyond our understanding. As Ellen White says:
“Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” “I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” It is impossible for the finite minds of men to fully comprehend the character or the works of the Infinite One. To the keenest intellect, to the most powerful and highly educated mind, that holy Being must ever remain clothed in mystery.”5
            “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”6 Right now, looking through finite eyes of faith, we can not fully know God, but one day, when we see Him face to face, we will know Him with the same depth that He knows us. Yet, even though we can not fully know Him now, just as we do not fully understand light, He is still the only Light that can illuminate our path in this dark world. He is, “the light of the world.”7


Notes
1 John 8:12 (King James Version).
2 ibid
3 “Thomas Young’s Double Slit Experiment,” Molecular Expressions, accessed November 3, 2013, http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/interference/doubleslit/
4 “Young Two-Slit Experiment,” University of Oregon online database, accessed November 3, 2013, http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec13.html
5 Ellen G. White, Testimonies to the Church vol. 5, p. 698.2, accessed November 3, 2013, https://egwwritings.org/singleframe.php
6 1 Corinthians 13:12 (King James Version).
7 John 8:12 (King James Version).



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