{"id":3343,"date":"2024-01-29T21:19:09","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T02:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3343"},"modified":"2024-02-02T21:35:50","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T02:35:50","slug":"a-perfect-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/29\/a-perfect-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"A Perfect Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,<\/em> click here<\/a>
 
In 1842, French philosopher Auguste Comte probably thought he was on safe ground when he predicted that humanity would never learn anything of significance about the stars. 
 
Those twinkling lights in the night sky were simply too far away \u2013 far beyond our capacity ever to see and appreciate \u201cup close.\u201d 
 
But all that changed during the first half of the twentieth century.  Spectacular technological breakthroughs produced what can only be described as the Golden Age of Telescopes.  Astronomers competed to build ever larger instruments capable of analyzing astonishingly dim rays of light emitted by stars and galaxies at extraordinary distances.   
 
The engineering challenge has always been the mirrors.  More specifically, the glass. 
 
The light from distant objects must be focused and magnified by parabola-shaped pieces of glass \u2013 giant slabs that, for want of a better term, must be perfect.  There must be no imperfections or bubbles.  Enormous reflecting mirrors can only be supported at the edges.  And that\u2019s a problem, because huge pieces of glass, like the 200-inch-wide mirror at Mt. Palomar near San Diego, California, have a tendency to sag in the middle because of gravity.  Even tiny sags can radically distort astronomical images. 
 
George Ellery Hale, the wizard who crafted the giant telescopes at both Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar, learned from trial and error that the parabolic shape of the main mirror must be accurate to within 5% of the wavelength of the light that is being gathered.
 
What does that mean? 
 
Consider an example.  Astronomy professor Emily Levesque points out that blue light coming from distant stars has a wavelength of 400 nanometers, which means the mirror must be ground and polished to within 20 nanometers of perfection.  That\u2019s thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair. 
 
That\u2019s why New York\u2019s Corning Glass Works, in 1934, allowed a full ten months for the giant Pyrex slab that would become the Palomar mirror just to cool, ever so slowly.  That was to ensure it didn\u2019t crack.  The slab was then transported by rail at a snail\u2019s pace to the West coast.  Crowds lined the route.  Armed guards provided protection every mile of the way.   
 
The Cal Tech optical shop then took eleven and a half years<\/u><\/em> to grind the glass, ever so slowly, to its ideal shape.  In 1948 it was coated with aluminum and painstakingly installed. 
 
Early the next year, Edwin Hubble \u2013 America\u2019s foremost skywatcher \u2013 took the new telescope on its test drive.  Mt. Palomar has been an astronomical superstar ever since, reshaping our understanding of the universe in surprising and spectacular ways. 
 
But that\u2019s nothing.
 
By the end of this decade, the Giant Magellan telescope \u2013 a project funded by scientists from nine countries \u2013 is expected to point its eye toward the exceedingly clear skies above the Atacama Desert in Chile.  Its mirror is actually a segmented quilt of seven of the largest reflecting surfaces ever made.  Digitally operated magnets will coordinate all seven, functionally turning them into a single mirror almost 1000 inches wide.
 
That will make the Giant Magellan 200 times more powerful than any telescope ever constructed, surpassing even the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes currently operating far above Earth\u2019s atmosphere.  Incredibly, the new instrument will be able to zoom in on individual stars that are hundreds of millions of light years away. 
 
Take that, Auguste Comte. 
 
If the crafting of mirrors has improved by leaps and bounds within our lifetimes, those who yearned for faithful reflections during Bible times were almost literally in the dark.
 
Silver-coated mirrors \u2013 the familiar \u201clooking glasses\u201d that we moderns could hardly live without \u2013 weren\u2019t invented until the Middle Ages.  For most ancient people, the best way to catch a glimpse of oneself was to gaze at the surface of a puddle or look down into a bucket of water. 
 
Rich people might own a highly polished piece of metal, such as bronze.  But the reflections generated by such \u201cmirrors\u201d were sketchy at best.
 
That\u2019s the background of Paul\u2019s comment in I Corinthians 13:12: \u201cNow we see in a mirror dimly, but then face-to-face.\u201d  Compared to standing in someone\u2019s presence, mirrors were notoriously unreliable windows onto reality. 
 
Here\u2019s how the New Living Translation<\/em> renders Paul\u2019s message:  \u201cNow we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.  All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.\u201d
 
When is \u201cthen\u201d?  That\u2019s when we will finally see Jesus \u2013 personally, face-to-face, real and alive \u2013 in the next world.
 
And in the meantime?
 
God would surely love for us to be like polished mirrors that accurately reflect who he is.  \u201cAnd we all, who with unveiled faces reflect the Lord\u2019s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit\u201d (2 Corinthians 3:18).
 
Others would look at us \u2013 at our character, our attitudes, our actions \u2013 and catch a glimpse of Jesus.
 
Reality, however, is painful.  Our hearts are pocked with imperfections.  We sag because of the gravity of sin.  Others throw a glance in our direction and scoff, \u201cIf that\u2019s what happens to someone who follows Jesus, include me out.\u201d 
 
But God doesn\u2019t give up easily.
 
If our current lives present merely a distorted reflection of his love and grace, it only means he hasn\u2019t finished the grinding process \u2013 the reshaping of our lives into the image of his Son.
 
It\u2019s long.  It\u2019s slow.  And it rarely feels good. 
 
But when we encounter him face-to-face, and finally see him the way he has always seen us, it will all be worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In 1842, French philosopher Auguste Comte probably thought he was on safe ground when he predicted that humanity would never learn anything of significance about the stars.  Those twinkling lights in the night sky were simply too far away \u2013 far beyond our capacity ever to see and appreciate \u201cup close.\u201d  But all that… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[352,236],"class_list":["post-3343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-holy-spirit","tag-transformation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3346,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343\/revisions\/3346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}