Reflecting the Light of Christ

I've never liked blue jays — they are noisy, aggressive, and territorial birds. However, I have to admit that they have beautiful coloring. Recently, in the online journal Brain Pickings by Maria Popova, I came across this fascinating information:

 “In the living world … blue is the rarest color: There is no naturally occurring true blue pigment in nature. In consequence, only a slender portion of plants bloom in blue and an even more negligible number of animals are bedecked with it, all having to perform various tricks with chemistry and the physics of light, some having evolved astonishing triumphs of structural geometry to render themselves blue: Each feather of the blue jay is tessellated with tiny light-reflecting beads arranged to cancel out every wavelength of light except the blue; the wings of the blue morpho butterflies … are covered with miniature scales ridged at the precise angle to bend light in such a way that only the blue portion of the spectrum is reflected to the eye of the beholder.”

It occurs to me that when Paul instructs us to “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rm 13:14) he is asking us to do something similar: bend light in such a way that the love of Christ is reflected to the eye of the beholder. We are to cancel out wavelengths of fear, hatred, judgment, greed, and envy so only the Christlike portion of the spectrum is reflected: love, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. It’s not that the other characteristics don’t exist in our world, but we can deflect them to create a life that is more pleasing and life giving to the eye and the soul.

As the natural world contains few plants and animals that have mastered the art of reflecting light to render themselves blue, few people have become truly skilled in bending light to reflect the love of Christ. The good news is that we get better at reflecting the light as we practice being kind, forgiving, and generous. As we pass on these skills to subsequent generations, eventually they will become inbred and humans will evolve into a people who are naturally Christlike, with the fullness of life that God has envisioned for us.

Blue jays, blue morpho butterflies, and other blue plants and creatures are signs of hope that we too can master the physics of light, not to make ourselves appear blue, but to clothe ourselves in the love of Christ.