Light can mysteriously travel for millions and billions of miles through space as invisible electromagnetic waves and never lose energy. Also, light waves only become visible when they react with matter. When you see the light of a star, you are the first person in perhaps a billion years that has ever seen that particular light beam. Space itself is black although it is filled with invisible radiation which we cannot see, and something that is called "dark matter." When sunlight strikes our atmosphere, it becomes visible as blue sky, white clouds, red sunsets, rainbows, and as rays lighting up dust particles in the air. Sunlight is reflected from our moon, from comets and asteroids, from planets and other moons in our solar system. Light from twinkling stars and glowing galaxies light up the night sky. But this visible light is only a small fraction of the total radiation spectrum which includes microwaves, cosmic rays, gamma rays, X-rays, neutrinos, etc. Some of these invisible wave particles become visible in the aurora and with specially designed detectors.
When light strikes a surface, there are three possible reactions; it may be reflected, it may be absorbed, or it may be transmitted. If light is absorbed, the object is called opaque; if light is transmitted, the object is called transparent. It is only as light is reflected or absorbed that an object becomes visible. If light is totally transmitted by an object without distortion, it would be invisible. It is only as light passes through a transparent substance and is refracted, focused, or dispersed that it can be analyzed. White light passed through a prism is separated into a spectrum of colors, and star light dispersed by a diffraction grating can be analyzed to reveal its origin and even the direction and velocity of the star's path. Colored object and paint are actually color mirrors. They absorb certain colors and reflect others. The organic dye in the skin of an apple reflects red, and the dye in a blue dress reflects blue. Paints are manufactured to reflect different combinations of frequencies so as to produce different colors. Objects that reflect no color are black, and those that reflect all colors are white.
People can be classified as spiritually transparent or spiritually opaque. Jesus gave His greatest condemnation to hypocrites, individuals who pretend to be what they are not, people who endeavor to hide their real motives and characters. They hide behind a facade of sanctimonious sincerity, whereas they are, as Jesus said, "whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones." These opaque individuals may be successful in hiding their true natures from human eyes, but not to God's X-ray eyes. In the judgment their natures will be revealed. How important it is that we recognize our sins and shortcomings and repent. How important that we are in God's sight "spiritually transparent."
