Visible To The Clad Eye

When we gaze up at the stars at night or hold up a ladybug to our face to take a closer look, we say that such things are visible to the naked eye. But for the past four hundred years or so, we have had access to telescopes and microscopes to look at things that were once invisible to the naked eye. Both telescopes and microscopes work on similar principles. They each have a series of glass lenses that focus and condense and distill the light that reaches our eyes, so that we can see both large things that are a far way off or small things up close. The more lenses or layers that you pack in, the more you can focus and distill the light. This is how revelation works. For truths that are too wonderful for us to comprehend, we must first receive line upon line, lens upon lens, so that we may learn to focus God's light into an image that our hearts and our minds can understand and make use of. The more times that we study and pray about and seek understanding for a certain concept or gospel principle or commandment, the more we will be able to focus and make clear the simple radiant truth. But telescopes and microscopes have moved beyond mere glass lenses to try to look at spectra of light that we couldn't see even with all of the lenses in the world. Electron microscopes examine objects that are smaller than our eyes can see at any magnification. And radio telescopes look at the universe through radio waves, a form of light that is too big and oscillates too slowly for our natural eyes to detect. Scientists have to convert these images into an analogy that makes sense to our limited brains. All of the colors in those rainbow nebula clouds you see when you look at images of space are added after the fact because our brains can't actually see the real colors. In a similar way, some Spiritual truths are too great for us to look at directly. That is why the Lord teaches us in parables. He gives us truths in the forms that our hearts and minds can receive. He asks us to trust Him and follow Him, not always understanding why because our spiritual eyes have not yet developed enough to perceive the light and colors of the truth as God sees it. But if we continue faithful and humble and willing to open our minds and hearts to the glory of God, then we will eventually see things as God sees them. His thoughts will become our thoughts as we make our ways into His ways.