Creative people, especially those who work in the visual arts, realize what an exquisite gift vision truly is. The gift isn’t mere sight; it’s seeing a world illuminated in living color. Let’s unwrap these gifts, think about how wonderful light and color vision are, and consider some insights into the truth of our existence.
Light and Sight
High school general science taught us that sunlight is white (and bright). But if you pass that light through a prism of glass or the droplets of a rain shower, the dispersed light yields a beautiful rainbow. We see those hues expressed fairly distinctly as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Of course, the hues blend into other identifiable colors like teal or chartreuse. In reality, there are several million different colors visible in the spectrum that runs from red to violet. Visible light is in a continuum of radiation that includes radio waves, heat, ultraviolet light, x-rays, and gamma rays to name a few.
Our ability to see what we call visible light is due to specialized cells in our eyes called rods and cones. Rods are highly sensitive photoreceptors, numbering around 120 million per eye. They see the world in shades of gray (from black to white), giving us the visual framework of moving images and our peripheral sight. Cones, by contrast, are sensitive to different ranges of wavelengths—roughly corresponding to red, green, and blue. To see yellow, for example, both red and green-sensitive cones respond to that wavelength, and the brain interprets those signals so that we perceive yellow. Each eye contains about six to seven million cones in total, with the highest concentration packed into the tiny central region called the fovea, where our sharpest and most detailed vision occurs.
But sight is far more elegant than any mere statistical account of receptors. Among the most intricate organs of the body, your eyes are continually streaming a full-motion rendering of the world through the optic nerves to your brain—both in stereo and spanning some 220 degrees of peripheral vision. And that is only the beginning: the iris controls the amount of light entering the eye, while the lens focuses the image—flipped upside down—onto the retina. At the speed of thought, you can move your eyes in tandem to look up, down, right, and left. We do not merely perceive splotches of light and dark; we behold a coherent world—form, depth, and motion rendered before us in living clarity. Our minds interpret what is seen in resplendent color.
(Let’s not forget that the eye, as is the rest of the body, is organic and built entirely from coded DNA from your parents at conception. This is mind-blowing.)
We’ve been given the gifts of light and the ability to see it in full spectral glory. That light illuminates our world, and by it we have a visual smorgasbord to experience. Consider what a world we have to enjoy: fields of flowers, gripping sunsets, shimmering rainbow fish in barrier reefs, herds roaming the African veldt, signs and wonders in the heavens; it’s endless and stunning. And for all these things to be gifts, there has to be a Giver. The Giver is God.
Creatives in the Image of God
Humans, all made in the imago Dei (image of God), are uniquely gifted by the Creator to create. We shouldn’t be surprised that early artists turned to the creation itself to derive colored pigments to use in their work. Pigments are sourced from minerals, plants, and even insects. Guess where a purple dye that originated in ancient Tyre around 1570 BC came from? It was extracted from the mucus of sea snails! Ingenious! Today, our printers blend cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks to print full gamut documents, paintings, and photographs.
People also draw inspiration from that same Creation for their works. From the hues of nature they paint grand works of art, weave vibrant tapestries, and assemble colored glass into radiant windows. “But wait, there’s more!” as Ron Popeil famously said. Indeed, while people are very deliberate in creating their works of art, fixing moments in time, our Creative Genius God made the heavens and the Earth a work of living art. Those romantic, splendorous sunsets are technicolor Monets in motion, with each passing minute, morphing into new compositions and hues. A gentle cloudscape can change into a ferocious storm in an instant, and still have mood and fierce beauty, unrivaled by the human imagination.
Designers garner inspiration for color palettes from nature itself. A scene from Monument Valley might produce a palette of oxide red, terracotta clay, burnt sienna, weathered bronze, sea glass teal, and deep harbor blue. A beach might inspire mist aqua, peach blush, a vibrant turquoise, fresh mint, and rustic rosewood for the artist’s palette. Color interplays around the planet constantly, everywhere at once. That’s why designers look to nature for palettes, because generating a suite of hues that work together is challenging. But it’s child’s play for God to put colors together in ultimate aesthetics.
The Ultimate Artist
Taken together, these things form a compelling case for the Creator. Who else could conceive of a living world and fill it with intelligent beings capable of imagining and creating from the very world they inhabit?
So maybe we should spend a moment and consider where sights, sight, and insights came from. Everything we are and everything we see are the grand creative work of God. In fact, the Apostle John clarifies in his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5). John rightly says the Creator is Jesus, the living Word, the Son of God. The Bible seizes on light as a symbol of absolute purity, goodness, righteousness, and truth.
Artists, who appreciate color, patterns, and rules of composition, should realize that the beauty and glory that compels us comes from a loving and providential Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ. The same eyes that discern harmony in a palette or balance in a composition can also see the order and beauty woven into the fabric of Creation itself. This is no accident of blind evolution or indifferent chance—it is the deliberate work of a loving Creator who delights in revealing Himself through what He has made (Romans 1:19-20).
Calling Creatives
But on a grave and more serious note, artists are cognizant of the brokenness of the world, perhaps better than most. I believe creatives are more likely to turn out for environmental causes and desire better stewardship of Earth. The Apostle Paul wrote about creation groaning, waiting for the redemption of the sons of men (Romans 8:19-23). Yet if we artists are honest, we will admit to our inner brokenness. We all have dark hearts and desires, pasts that shame us, and sin that separates us from God.
The good news is that the One who spoke light into existence is the same Jesus who entered our broken world to redeem it by offering Himself as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His blood ran red when He died on the cross. Best of all, Jesus rose to life from the tomb on the third day after His death, and he offers forgiveness for our sin and shame, restoring the relationship with our Creator that sin fractured. Jesus said those who place their hope in Him will have eternal life with Him. This is what the Gospel is all about.
So let the splendor of sight stir more than mere appreciation. Let it awaken wonder, gratitude, and ultimately faith in Jesus. Unwrap the gift of vision by turning to the Giver. Behold the living art of Creation, and let it lead you to worship the Lord Jesus Christ—the Ultimate Artist and Light of the World.
I should mention some of the wonder experienced by other seeing creatures. With cone densities far exceeding our own, birds of prey like the bald eagle can spot small prey from exceptional distances. Honey bees, too, inhabit a different visual world. The honey bee can see ultraviolet wavelengths, and—providentially—many flowers display vivid patterns in ultraviolet light, guiding them directly to nectar and pollen. Other species have fascinating, physiological differences in their vision systems, and we can only imagine the kinds of things they see.
