Let There Be Light

Well hello, one more time, Dick Voth here. It is Christmas 2021 in just a few days. And recently I had a wonderful conversation with a good friend of mine. Her name is Mackenzie Matthews, and she has great gifts in a lot of areas. But I found out that one of them is question-asking. Ordinarily on this program, on stories to make sense of it all, quite often I will interview people, talk to them, have conversations at their homes or out on their work side or walking along near the Puter River somewhere or in Washington DC. But this time, this time, Mack asked if she could turn the tables and ask me some questions. She knows that I like the subject of light and have talked about it quite a bit over the years. And so we did it. And so she's the one asking the questions. And during this season when we talk a lot about light coming into darkness, this is how she teed it up and the conversation she led. Here you are with Mackenzie Matthews and the old guy. All right, Dr. Fo. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Dr. Matthew. I'm not a doctor. You are a doctor. I like to call you that. Well, thanks for being here. You said something recently and that's really stuck with me. It's been rattling around in my mind. And it was about light. And I want to talk more about that. You said that light is God's signature. Can you talk a little bit more? Sure. About that. This takes me back 50 years. A lot of things take me back 50 years, but this takes me back. I think it would probably be the spring of 69 and the spring of 1970. And we were Ruth and I were church planters in urban Illinois near the university. And one Sunday morning, this congregation of maybe 70 people, an older couple came and sat in the macro after the worship time had started. And by older, you're talking about a 28 year old and these folks were probably in their late 40s, mid to late 40s. So they were about gone and very well put together a couple if I can put it that way in terms of just how they dressed and so forth. And so at the end of the service, I prayed when I opened my eyes. They were gone. Well, in a congregation of 70, you notice how that works. And a young man came up to me, married fella, who worked at the university. He said, do you know who that was? It was here. I said, no, he said, that was the Howard mom's dead. I said, that's fantastic. Who is the Howard mom's dead? And the Howard mom's dead turned out, and I'll cut to the chase here, turned out to be one of, I think, one of top five spectroscopists in the world didn't know what that was. Spectroscopy is a discipline within analytical chemistry that uses light for scientific measurement. Long story short, Howard and I became friends. He asked after some time if I would baptize him, they had a summer home in Lake Michigan. I drove up to Michigan, baptized him in Lake Michigan. And he became a wonderful part of the congregation he and his wife. One day we were driving along and I said, how are to have this question. Why do you think the first recorded words of God in Genesis or in the whole book, if you will, were let there be light. And he looked at me very kindly, not like I had a third eye in the middle of my forehead or anything. He looked at me and said, well, it's the basis for life on the planet. And one of the bases for the universe, I suppose. And he went on to explain various things to me. About that time, maybe within a year of that, Ruth and I went to our first overseas conference. And Howard and his wife helped send us to it along with the congregation. And it was called Adventure of Living, sponsored by a group called Word Books and another group called Faith at Work. It was back in the time when there was a lot of people in the country, but there was also sort of winds of renewal blowing in various denominational groups. And one of their speakers they had is a fellow named Dr. Helmet Tilica. And back during World War II, there was a group called a Gertler group that ended up, Dr. Bonhoeffer was part of it, that ended up trying to take out Hitler. And all of them were caught and killed except two. And Tilica was one of those. He was 29, so he wasn't well known. But he was a German Lutheran theologian professor of dogmatics, the University of Tubergen or someplace. And he wrote a book called How the World Began. And it had to do with Genesis, it's one of my favorite books. And in there, he has a chapter on light being God's signature. So I learned this part from Howard Momsted and I learned that part from Helmet Tilica. And I came along and sort of put them together and grew from there. I mean, we see the light as a metaphor, all throughout scripture. So it's beautiful to think about those things or it's poetic to think about light being God's signature. But when you talk about the kind of that granular, the building blocks of the universe, I've heard you say before, like nothing exists without light. Like when you explored that further, what parts of it stuck out to you the most? Well, as Howard explained it to me, he said, Dick, you know Einstein's general theory of relativity, which is energy equals mass times square of the speed of light. He said speed of light is the constant in that equation. That's the solid piece, if you will. If you drive down the road and you see some people building a new section of road, they're using what is called laser transits. They the the pink light off of a marker hill by somebody down the road because the wavelength is the most precise unit of measurement for distance. If you bombard any element, you know, the that chart of elements that you had in junior higher and eyes in general science, you know, if you bombard any elements with light, it will each one will uniquely absorb or fluoresce light at a given rate. If you do that with cadmium, I understand, it emits what's called the cadmium red line. And this is all I know. So those folks who are listening, don't call me. I mean, say could you expand? I can't expand on it. But the but the cadmium red line is the basic the building block for the atomic clock, which is the most precise measuring device. So you have time and space all in that one statement. Any farmer knows that without light, you don't have the food chain without photosynthesis, you don't have the food chain. So you don't have that any artist as you would know being an artist yourself knows that without light, you don't have color. I used to I used to joke sort of joke that, you know, my bright yellow shirt hanging in the closet isn't yellow. And so the next time somebody says, how do you know there's a god, you say, well, because your shirt's yellow, you know, whatever. But but that whole that whole construct, and if you go online and just type in electro magnetic spectrum, you will see the range of things that that light enables. And it's everything from what we're doing right now in terms of broadcast. So you so you have television, you got shortwave, you got FM, you got AM, so on one end of the spectrum. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have all these other things, everything for I think I have this correct in terms of ends, everything from radar to when when they swipe your cheese across that little thing at the grocery store and it tabulates from that code, that's light at work. And if you God forbid have a brain tumor and they go in and they do gamma knife brain surgery on you, that's the use of light. So on one end, you have gamma knife brain surgery. And on the other end, you got Dr. Phil in terms of what light does. We usually talk about light in terms of the visible spectrum of light, what we can see. But as we know by X-ray and ultraviolet and infrared and all that, you've got all other kinds of wavelengths of light. And I didn't know any of that. And I didn't really think too much about it except that that's the first sentence let there be light. And my my rhetorical question to that is always do you think God knew? And of course the reason I asked that is, well, yeah, you know, he did. So and there have just been various other pieces of that that was interesting, had a guy come to me one time when I said that piece about time, he said, I repair watches and clocks. And I always had the sense I was working with something connected to eternity. Because I always see time and eternity as sort of two different qualities, if you will. But still there's there's something in that. And I think in that same book by by Tielica, he he quotes a Dutch artist. And I think he's Dutch. And I think you say his name, Daubler or Doibler, D-A-U-B-L-E-R with that little umat thing over there. And he describes color as suffering and structured light. When you see it in Scripture, when you see that signature, he signs in with it. Then you go along and the and the world is destroyed, if you will. And when he signs back in, it's this rainbow. You know, it's all the colors. It's what we used to do an acronym for. And before we took that general science test in a Reuzybiv is it? Red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet. Do I have that right? Something like that. Close. And then, you know, you have the Israelites being led out of Egypt by Moses. And you have the pillar of cloud by day with that bright Egyptian sun shining off of it. I mean, white clouds with the sun hitting them are just pristine. They're stark in their beauty. And then a pillar of fire by night. And every time God shows up in any significant way, you glory this Hebrew word Kavoth. It's a it's a shining. So Moses comes down from the mountain having spoken with God. And you got the Ten Commandment. And to put a bag over it, they said his face was shining. Right? Anyway. Which you see at the Transfiguration. Yeah, exactly the same. I get carried away when I. Bethlehem. I mean, there are lots of those moments. Oh, yeah. Paul on the road to Damascus essentially gets knocked down by light. At Christmas time, when we talk about Jesus being the light of the world, you know, we're entering the Advent season when this is being recorded. And it's something that we say. And even when you when you're talking about the science behind light, I'm like, true, it's all over my head. Great. It's over my head. But it's one of those things where you take light for granted. You have moments where you don't think I don't think about those things. I don't see those things. The Advent season is an interesting one because there are the Christmas lights on buildings. There are the moments where you have a candlelight service for Christmas Eve. You have moments of looking and experiencing and spending some time to intentionally see Jesus as the light of the world. It just shifts the power of that or maybe the focus of that. When you think about all that that happened what you said 50 years ago in the 70s, how has that impacted the way that you experienced maybe the Christmas season or would there be any differences that you would say this knowledge has impacted you in your day-to-day life? I think just the fact that you have an understanding or an awareness of light, you know, John in the first chapter says, and he was life in that life was the light of men. And the light came into the world and the darkness could not overwhelm it. I have a friend who has asked one time, how fast is the speed of darkness? He equipped it slightly ahead of the speed of light because light is chasing it away. And there is something about light and darkness, just like light and chaos. When you have light you know how to arrange things because it brings order. That's Genesis 1. John 1, you know, the Gospel of John, it's that same sense that when you have light in a space it brings clarity. I think that's what Advent does. And it doesn't have to be a lot. Just a little have a friend who was a retired three-star general who fought in Vietnam and he was in helicopters. And he said in back in the day there was an iconic cigarette lighter, World War II in Vietnam, Korea, it's called a zippo lighter. They probably still have. And he said, I have stood in the rice paddy and landed a whole flotilla of helicopters by the light, single light of a zippo lighter at night because it was in such contrast to everything. And so when it said, when Jesus says, I'm the light of the world and says in sort of on the backstroke and you are, that idea of something that brings shape and form to that which is murky and obscure, that's a key piece. Light brings with it a warmth, just in its comfort capacity as any three-year-old about what a nightlight does. On the one hand, the intimacy of comfort, on the other hand, the overwhelmingness of glory are all captured in Christmas. And you know, we go and get trees when we put lights out and so forth. I think that came from the, I'm not positive of this, but I think I read a story once about the fellow who, German fellow, who was coming late at night back to his home and he saw a tree framed by the stars behind it. And it looked like lights on the on the tips of the branches. And so that idea came forward. I think it's the fellow, Franz Gruber, I think is his name, who wrote the lyrics at least silent night, which was my grandmother's favorite song. Yeah, I have a great story about her if you want to throw it in sometime, but it doesn't have to do with light necessarily, but it's just a good story. Well, it's fun to think about your Christmas and the things that make us think of Christmas particularly. And light, do you have colored lights on your tree or do you have white lights on your tree? Actually, Ruth is a white light person. I think probably on the tree inside the house we'll have some colored lights, but we have some bushes and little trees outside. So those are all white lights. I regularly have marital disputes about this because when he's a colored light guy, see these are the things they don't tell you in premarital counseling. White is classy. You you bring you bring you bring your history to the table when you marry. You do. Yeah. And it's fine. We have a we have an artificial tree with that's just, you know, it's nice, easy, but it has a remote and we can go back and forth. So that's tends to be what we do. But yeah, it's been so I have a son who's almost a year and a half. He's almost 18 months. And it's been really fun to watch him or to experience the Christmas season, particularly through his eyes. And we have things where we can go to the zoo lights or we can go to look at look at lights, look at the Christmas lights. But it's been fun to watch the wonder or some of what you talk about when you have the glory, the warmth that you think of when you think of Christmas. That it's such a dark like outside is so dark. It's getting dark here. These days like 430. It feels like a dark time of like just the calendar. Yeah, part of the year. But to have the lights and particularly to drive down the street and see them, there's something magical about them always. But for me this year, especially magical to see them through his eyes. Well, and you think of how we use language. So Powell, your boy, looks at the tree and we say, and his eyes just light it up. We use that language to talk about understanding. You say something and I say, enlighten me. I mean, you go to pick any, pick any 10 universities across the country and somewhere in their branding, you'll probably find a torch. This whole idea of this is about illuminating one's mind. Well, let's say the light being the truth. Like there's someone to say, Hey, what's in the darkness? We brought the light. There's some of that that is a secrecy and some of that that is a truth. Yeah. And so to bring something in the light, meaning something to see is true. You know, I was what you had mentioned that I'm an artist. I went to art school, studied art in college. And I spent a semester in Italy in Tuscany. It was a dreamy. It was basically like a three and a half month vacation. But it was interesting. It was actually a pretty difficult season for me spiritually, because I felt pretty alone in that time. But I remember being at the Vatican, which is a gorgeous and overwhelming play. And there's one tomb Pope Alexander VII has a breathtaking tomb. It has lots of sculptures that represent different things. But one of the attributes that's represented is faith and faith is represented by this woman. There's four different ones, but one of the women. And she's embracing the sun. It's like holding the sun and it's to represent faith. It's representing holding onto truth. So it's interesting that the image, and I really latched on to that in that season. I bought a ring that looked like a sun to like to commemorate that season. But it really is that it's everywhere. And there's so many different ways you can take that metaphor, but how much more powerful it is to think about light in that way, particularly in this season. I want to ask for you to be pastoral. I mean, not that it's hard to do. When I think about particularly where we are 2021, for many people walking into the Christmas season, it feels like it's been a really heavy season. It's been a dark season. Maybe there are more empty chairs at holiday gatherings. There is a lot of stress when it comes to the idea of pulling off the holidays. It just feels like a heavy time for us culturally and for many people also heavy, personally. And I would just be curious what you would say to them, what encouragement you might have for anyone listening who feels like they resonate with that or particularly would say, yeah, it feels like a darker Christmas time, a darker advent time for me. What encouragement would you have for those folks? I think when times are difficult, we have this tendency to look at what we don't have as opposed to what we have. And there is some sense in which, if we have one relationship, one friendship, one thing, that to capitalize, if you will, leverage maybe that's, those are both economic terms, but to be able to understand that as we embrace those friendships and those relationships, those connections, that that does, in fact, bring light into our lives. I mean, for many people, the idea of Jesus as the light of the world, they might even see that as branding or some, well, that's what you say or whatever it is. But I think the idea that when I think about what can I bring to a friendship, what can I do to bring light to the other person, either by my listening or probably most particularly by my presence, it takes me out of why do I feel such darkness and allows me, probably unwittingly, unknowingly, to bring light and to use the language in a different way to lighten the burden. It's not the same word. But I just, I just think for me, the loneliest Christmas I ever spent was when my parents' marriage was starting to unravel. And it was too tense at home. I lived 90 miles away. The college I went to was 90 miles away from my home. And that Christmas I stayed on campus, small college. I was essentially by myself. And that's a time at which I really felt the darkness. But it wasn't long before a couple of friends came back and that changed it. I think things tend to get darker when I focus on myself. And there's always someplace else to focus, always somebody else to focus on. And that helps bring the light of the world to them. And without getting too cheesy, I think I'll stop there. I have one other question, maybe think of that. You know, when we talk about hope, and particularly the light of the world coming in the hope, like I had known when Jesus came the first time that there had been 400 years of silence from God before that. No prophets, yeah. And Jesus coming in the hope that came with that, just be curious what you would say when you think about hope or moments when it's been easy to have it or moments been harder to have it, what would you say? What comes to mind for you when you think about hope? Do you have an easier question than that? I know that is a hard question. No, that's a good question. I didn't prep you for that question. No, no, that's a good question. But I think, well, in part of what, when I think of the darkness or moments when you're sitting in the darkness, and some of what you said of where you're placing your attention, where you place your focus, how we walk through moments like that, hope can be hard, hope can be tricky to grasp onto, or there's been times in my life when hope felt really dangerous because man hope only leads to disappointment. I've said that before. Like when I'm hopeful, I can be disappointed, which, you know, that maybe says more about where my heart space was at that time. But the idea of clinging to the light of the world, being the thing where hope is birth, a different kind of hope, maybe. There's this very interesting verse in the scriptures where Paul says, Christ in you, the hope of glory. He connects his presence, your life, hope, and light, glory. He, I don't know that I've ever said that before, but he can that thread tragic words in the Old Testament is Iqabad. You know, the story of the legend of sleepy hollow Iqabad crane and all of it Iqabad literally means the glory has departed. There was this time in Old Testament where God's presence went away. Paul comes along and says, when you have received Christ, when you have embraced him, let him embrace you, you get his glory. You get, and with that, you get the hope that is attached to it. So I think to have a verse or an idea like that that connects them all is something to ponder. Ponder's a good old fashioned word that means mull or mulch or muse on something. So gosh, well, thanks for making time to riff and talk about this idea. This is good. Light, hope, the advent season. You're really light of the world. He is the light of the world. Cool. Thank you. There is something about light that even in the speaking of it or speaking about it warms the heart, encourages the mind and gives us hope for the future. Jesus is the light of the world. And that's all I have to say about that. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for those of you who subscribe. And we pray in these next few days that it will be a good time and an encouraging time. And we'll catch you next time. Bye-bye.