Hebrews 1:2-3: in these last days has spoken to us in His Son whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He made the world and He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of His power…

Genesis 1:1-3: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

And so, this is how the Bible begins. God spoke and there is. And God began with light. And I have a particular interest in light. I have devoted my professional life to the study of how we humans interact with light and how to optimize our appreciation of all the light that surround us by caring for our precious eyes and the visual system.

How can speaking or words be associated with light? Well, actually, there is a language of light because every single color and even the light that we cannot see can be named universally. While green light may be described as verde in Spanish and vert in French, a specific shade of green can be universally noted as 570 nanometers across any people or language group. So, by stating 570 nm, I can convey to anyone in the world familiar with wavelengths the exact color shade without even showing them the color. There is a language to light. There is nothing random nor arbitrary to light. The rainbow created by water vapors acting like a prism will always display the colors separated by their respective wavelengths, from the shorter wavelengths to the longer wavelengths. Every time. When we detect light, it contains all the wavelengths in perfect harmony.

And our eyes are designed to detect the various wavelengths and enjoy the beauty of the world around us. And it is when something goes awry that we appreciate the wonder of our visual system. For the people with color deficiency, there is something anomalous about one or more of their cone photoreceptor types. It’s like they cannot detect the subtle difference between certain wavelengths. It’s like hearing the same sound for “b’s” and “p’s” and “v’s”. If we don’t detect the differences, that will make understanding anything spoken quite confusing. In fact, most people with color vision deficiency experience color confusion and not the absence of color though there is a very small number of people who lack the ability to detect any color at all. So, when the system is working optimally, we can enjoy all the subtly different shades of color, like the beautiful shades of green and yellow and red as the leaves change color in the fall. And that ability to detect subtle differences help us to identify, for instance, a blush, when a sincerely given compliment has been well received.

And light is essential for life to exist. Without light, there is no life. Recall photosynthesis from high school biology classes. The tiny blue green algae, single-cellular organisms, have the ability to generate power because they have the capacity to convert molecules in the air and the water that surrounds them into usable energy. These organisms at the bottom of the food chain are crucial for life here on earth for all the other organisms.

Photosynthesis is one aspect of biology that really got me excited about science. There is a language to biochemistry. Look at the periodic table. It’s like the alphabet of the language of chemistry. The chemical process that takes carbon dioxide and water (dihydrogen monoxide) molecules through a step by step process energized by light (photons) and converts them to simple sugars (C6H12O6) and oxygen (O2) is also universally understood as chemistry is a language of its own.

Especially today, light is viewed as one of the most efficient source of renewable energy. That is not by accident. Scientists have sought to harness the energy of light for centuries. Examine a solar panel. Consider how much design (through countless scientists and teams of scientists working together throughout time) and processes are inputed to produce a solar panel that can convert the energy of the sun into usable power for consumption. That tiny single-celled blue green algae smaller than the period at the end of this sentence is intrinsically designed to generate energy from light more efficiently than a solar panel of any size. And the mechanism to carry out this energy conversion fits microscopically into a tiny cell. And no solar panel has ever been created with the ability to duplicate itself, but the tiny blue green algae does all this and can duplicate itself, over and over again. All on it’s own. What kind of design is this? Why should we deny the obvious and insist that this little living dynamo is the result of a cosmic accident?

Hmmmm.

So, God created light by the word of His power. Then God said, let there be light and there was light.