Tourist captures spectacular ‘fire rainbow cloud’ phenomenon on camera

A few days ago I posted about physicists who believe they have discovered a parallel universe bumping into ours. I'd written about what the Bible says about heaven, wondered where heaven is, and how much different the laws of physics might be within it. Mostly, I wondered if God's heaven is immediately next to us, not just parallel, but in amongst us, just invisible due to being in another dimension.

Today a friend sent me a neat story from the Caribbean. "Tourist captures spectacular ‘fire rainbow cloud’ phenomenon on camera". The story isn't being put forward as a spectacular sign from God or anything like that. The sub-hed to the headline states, "There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the stunning sky display."

There are two interesting things to me about the story. First, the rainbow-cloud phenomenon photographed there is pretty. I like pretty.

Telegraph UK

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

Telegraph UK

The meteorological explanation for the rainbow cloud is pretty simple. As it's stated in the Telegraph article,

"In clouds, iridescence is a by-product of sunlight being diffracted by water droplets or ice crystals, causing the various wavelengths of light, which we see as colours, to emerge at different angles," he said.

"As they reach the observer's eye, the observer perceives a pattern of various colours as those different wavelengths reach his or her eye from distinct directions, rather than being jumbled together and appearing whitish."

The second thing I thought of when I saw this photo and read the explanation for its appearance, is that the colors are there all along. It's the angle which makes the difference. It is all about the light- when and at which angle it penetrates the wavelength.

It's like the kingdom of God. It is there all along, we just can't see it until the Light penetrates our eyes at a different angle. This is true in a twofold way. The first way the Light penetrates us is by faith, when faith comes. Paul experienced that on the road to Damascus in a vivid and physical way. The Light appeared and he was struck blind for three days, as Jesus spoke to him directly. Then the scales fell from Paul's eyes and he could see. For the rest of us, faith comes in a metaphorically similar way- the scales fall from our eyes when we repent, and we can "see" Jesus, spiritually.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

The second way the Light comes and illuminates what is already there is when we die, or when we are raptured alive to see Jesus in the future. We will finally be able to physically see by sight what was there all along, the parallel universe which is God's heaven. We will see Jesus, we will see the New Jerusalem, we will see the amazing creatures who have six wings and wheels within wheels, we will be able to see all of it. It already exists, of course, it is present in real form. We just can't see it, like we usually cannot see all the colors of the spectrum in a white cloud.

But when the angle changes and suddenly we're surrounded by iridescent Light, spectacular beauty and color, hallelujah!

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. (Colossians 3:2)

Set your eyes on things above, too! You never know, while you're privileged to see a rare rainbow cloud, you just might also see Jesus returning to gather His loved ones!