One evening, when I had finished my last class of the day and was walking to another building on campus, I glanced up at the sky and stopped in my tracks. The sky was beautiful; it took my breath away. The sun started to dip below the horizon, filling the sky with brilliant orange color. But it was the large, puffy clouds that caught my attention the most.
They were bright pink.
I walked more slowly, staring, until the sun suddenly disappeared below the horizon and the sky dimmed dramatically. Now the clouds turned ashy grey. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that something so beautiful and unique a minute ago was now bleak and plain. Did the clouds have some hidden beauty I wasn't seeing right now?
Later I realized that on their own, the clouds were just empty, blank canvases. It was the sun's rays that made the clouds beautiful as they reflected its glory. Sound familiar?
The concept of reflecting glory reminds me of something I heard on the radio years ago, when Luci Swindoll (the sister of renowned evangelist Chuck Swindoll) presented a unique view of us as Christians. According to Ms. Swindoll, we are all broken mirror fragments, broken by our pasts, our sins, our failures, and our experiences, but all able to reflect the glory of Jesus Christ! We can reflect His glory despite our brokenness -- even through our brokenness!
This is an illustration of who we are. We are blank, grey clouds and broken mirrors. But even we can be used for His glory if we choose to reflect Him no matter the circumstances. Just as I was captivated by the beauty of that sunset and wondered whether the beauty originated from the clouds or from the sun shining on the clouds, so will the world look at us and wonder if the peace we have (or the confidence, the hope, the joy) is something we somehow found in ourselves, or if it really does come from knowing Jesus Christ intimately.
2 Corinthians 3:18, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit."
2 Corinthians 4:6, "For God, who said, 'Light shall shine out of darkness,' is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."
Isaiah 60:1-3, "Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising."
