A Kaleidoscope

My daughter has a toy kaleidoscope that her grandparents bought for her. It’s nothing fancy, really, just a brightly colored cardboard tube with some cheap plastic beads inside. The same kind of beads I used to thread onto countless safety pins (remember those?). Anyway, I hadn’t seen a kaleidoscope in years and had forgotten how enchanting they are. I held it up to the window and slowly turned the plastic tumbler, watching as vibrant patterns and images were created while listening to the gentle tick of the beads as they fell into place.

I googled “kaleidoscope” to see how they work and found this definition: “A kaleidoscope is a tube of mirrors containing loose colored beads, pebbles, or other small colored objects. The viewer looks in one end and light enters the other end, reflecting off the mirrors.” I love that because it reminds me of God and his creation.

Really, when you think about it, we are just a few loose beads or brightly colored objects living alongside each other. None of us are very remarkable on our own. But when we are held up so his glorious light can shine on us, we individually become the vibrant objects that we were created to be. And here’s the best part: when we love one another and live in community together, we get to see that glorious light reflecting off of each other creating beautiful patterns and pictures with our lives. God made us to live in community with each other so we can reflect the light of his glory, grace, and love onto each other, just like beads in a kaleidoscope.

1 John 4:12: “No one has seen God; but if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”