By Patti Amsden
As I was reading the other day, I happened upon some statistics about the detailed design of the human eye.
The writer was expounding upon the eye's unprecedented sensitivity, precision, complexity and beauty. Perhaps the article caught my attention because of the enthusiasm of the book's author, or maybe it was the proliferation of statistics that verified the masterpiece of the Creator, or possibly I am just an information geek. Whatever the reason that caused my focus to be arrested, I have continued to contemplate the spiritual implications of what I read.
The eye functions because light passes through the cornea, into the iris, onto the lens and then shines on the retina, which is a thin lining in the back of the eye. The retina is comprised of photoreceptor cells that are light-sensitive, converting the image into electrical signals that can in turn be interpreted by the brain. On the retina are 120 million rods for low-light vision and 7 million cones for color and fine details. Each eye has 1 million nerve fibers that electrically connect the photoreceptors in the retina to the visual cortex of the brain.
In addition to all of this almost unfathomable intricacy, we also discover that the eye can function in a broad spectrum of luminosity. The dimmest conditions allowing sight vary from the brightest conditions by a factor of 10 billion. Who has not experienced the eyes adjusting from the bright sunlight upon entering the darkened theater room? When the amount of ambient light suddenly decreases, the eye begins a process of adaptation. Under very low light conditions, it can take the eye60 minutes to fully accommodate.
I found it fascinating that the eye requires such a long period of time to adjust from bright light to darkness. As I considered this phenomenon, I thought upon the process that occurs when people walk away from the light of truth into the darkness of deception, when the radiance of honesty gives way to the obscurity of duplicity, or when the beacon of love is ignored and replaced by the shadow of hatred. The journey away from light requires a period of time to adjust. No one goes immediately from good to bad. The "eye of the soul" has to progressively adjust to the next level of darkness. The heart must become accustomed to the dimming surroundings. The will accommodates to the shadows of altered reality. A year or two or more pass; and the conscience adjusts to the darkened state. An unharnessed passion, two unbridled obsessions or multiple unchecked pleasures, and the soul has regulated to embrace the night.
Yet even in the darkest surroundings, the spiritual eye searches out a ray of light. In the physical realm, adaptation to darkness is a slow process; but adaptation from darkened surrounding to bright light conditions requires only minutes. The retina is so sensitive that as little as one to two photons of light can trigger a visual signal in each photoelectric cell. On a dark night, the natural eye can see a small candle flame from 30 miles away. Perhaps it only takes a faint glow of truth to shine light into the eye of the heart, thus illuminating a pathway out of darkness, back to the light. It just may be that God has constructed both the physical eye and the spiritual eye in such a way that they can quickly adapt once light is allowed entrance.
Light can be found in many places, but nothing can compare to that which shines from the pages of Scripture and the words of Jesus.
Patti Amsden is co-pastor of Son Life Church in Collinsville.
