My daughter recently spent a week with her aunt in Kansas City and when she got back she was all excited because she had found the perfect Father's Day gift for me. Well to say the least I was intrigued because 1) my daughter rarely is forward thinking on gifts and 2) she got it from a garage sale. To my delight she had found a nicely framed poster of the image to left. For those not as geekly focused as the Ryberg household, it is an image of Anakin Skywalker as a child with the shadow of Darth Vader, the entity this innocent boy would someday become.
Now I am going to go a little nerdy here for a few so bear with me. Penumbra. It is one of my favorite words that i first heard about a few years ago. A penumbra is the partially shaded area cast behind a planetary object, but not the completely dark area directly behind the object (say what???!??!) See below for a better understanding.
Now I am going to go a little nerdy here for a few so bear with me. Penumbra. It is one of my favorite words that i first heard about a few years ago. A penumbra is the partially shaded area cast behind a planetary object, but not the completely dark area directly behind the object (say what???!??!) See below for a better understanding.
See we have this great source of light that lights up everything in its path. But behind these objects you have shadow, and sometimes it is complete darkness and sometimes it is just shaded. That's the penumbra!
Now here is another interesting scientific delving: though we often describe something as being dark or light, we cannot actually measure how dark something is. We have to measure how much or how little LIGHT there is. When its pitch dark, it is more accurately described as the complete absence of light.
Now what is the point of this delving into my inner geek and nerd? I think our relationships with God are alot like these planetary bodies. God is light. God is good (all the time). And we as his creations are constantly bathed in the his glorious light. But we have this space, where we block out God, we cast our shadow of darkness. Our sin. Now most of us are not living in an umbra, completely devoid of God's light. We tend to fluctuate between being in the light and skirting into our penumbra. Because sin is simply our turning away from God's light. We turn our back towards God and thus we block out his light. We do this. God doesn't stop shining his light. He can't direct it only on some people. It is all encompassing and reaches everywhere. The only thing that stops it is us.
And this is why I really love my Anakin/Vader shadow poster. It reminds me we all have that Vader in us. We can turn from the light and live in that shadow. We can see just how badly we can live in that shadow, just how far we can depart of God's plan. Or we can simply turn back around. We can repent daily and stare into that blinding, glorious light and embrace the amazing life God wants and plans for us. We have a choice. And it is all ours.
Now here is another interesting scientific delving: though we often describe something as being dark or light, we cannot actually measure how dark something is. We have to measure how much or how little LIGHT there is. When its pitch dark, it is more accurately described as the complete absence of light.
Now what is the point of this delving into my inner geek and nerd? I think our relationships with God are alot like these planetary bodies. God is light. God is good (all the time). And we as his creations are constantly bathed in the his glorious light. But we have this space, where we block out God, we cast our shadow of darkness. Our sin. Now most of us are not living in an umbra, completely devoid of God's light. We tend to fluctuate between being in the light and skirting into our penumbra. Because sin is simply our turning away from God's light. We turn our back towards God and thus we block out his light. We do this. God doesn't stop shining his light. He can't direct it only on some people. It is all encompassing and reaches everywhere. The only thing that stops it is us.
And this is why I really love my Anakin/Vader shadow poster. It reminds me we all have that Vader in us. We can turn from the light and live in that shadow. We can see just how badly we can live in that shadow, just how far we can depart of God's plan. Or we can simply turn back around. We can repent daily and stare into that blinding, glorious light and embrace the amazing life God wants and plans for us. We have a choice. And it is all ours.